Reprise
by Taxie
Summary: Post PotS. The killing devices weren't the only thing Blayce the Gallan had up his sleeve. "If that's all it takes to be a legend, legends are made from baskets of lies." Chapter 7 and epilogue. Complete!
1. Chapter 1

Despite the dim light in the room, King Jonathan – Jon to his closest friends and advisors - winced and rubbed his eyes wearily with one hand. Light bled in through windows holding sputtering candles, and with the glowing blue orb he'd summoned for more steady light above the makeshift confrence/throne room, it was too much.

A sharp elbow nudged softly at his left side. "You look terrible," Thayet, his wife, queen, and co-ruler informed him, leaning forward to stare sternly into his face. Black hair swept forward from her shoulders with the movement, framing her pale skin and making her dark green eyes more intense than usual.

If he were any less exhausted, her concern and looks would have been more outright attractive. As it was had to stop himself from letting his head fall on her shoulder, even though his wife still sported battle armament and it likely wouldn't have made a very comfortable pillow. Instead, he settled for sarcasm. "You're too kind," he replied, voice a low rumble.

Thayet sighed through her nose, and shuffled through her layers of armor for a bit. "Men," she said softly, shaking her head. After a few moments of shifting through her gear, she was able to coax a small belt-purse out from under her clothing. She pulled out a piece of rock candy from the belt and handed it to her husband. "Eat it," she told him.

Jon twisted the bit of candy between his fingers idly; black, purple, and green light bounced endlessly around inside of the clear rock, marking it as the energy-renewing poultice that Duke Baird had invented. Sighing, he smiled wanly at his queen and popped it into his mouth. Almost instantly his mind began to clear and the ache behind his eyeballs let up a bit.

"What did you do with _your_ ration?" Thayet demanded, beginning to rearrange her armor again.

"Mages," Jon told her from behind the piece of candy in his mouth. Even with the extra energy boost it gave him, he still felt as though he could crawl into a bed and sleep for a few years. He rolled the candy into his left cheek so he could speak clearer. "They needed it more than I did at the time, if I recall."

Thayet sighed, and leaned up against the back of her throne, looking almost as bad as Jon felt. "At least it's over."

Jon nodded, grateful that the headache he had was fading, but grim in the knowledge that it was merely delayed, not gone. Magic could only heal so much; the body still needed recuperation time.

The only reason why the king wasn't recuperating at the moment was that he was waiting for word from his second-in-command, Sir Gareth the Younger. The second battle for Mastiff Fortress had been especially exhausting for the king; the only thing to be glad about was that the Scanran War was finally complete. All that was left was the legal dances and treaty-signings and then Jon wouldn't see hide nor tail of the rocky, freezing, unforgiving north for a while. In the direct aftermath of the battle, the royals had been quickly spirited away from Mastiff, both for logistical and safety reasons. Groups of Riders, Knights, and the King's Own had been dispatched for cleanup purposes.

Normally it would have chafed at Jon to be sent away to wait, but he was so exhausted his bones were creaking and he couldn't find the energy to even put up a fight on principle. He tried to smother a yawn.

Thayet placed an absentminded hand on her husband's back, her other curled into a fist and being used to prop up her chin. Between the two of them Jon knew they weren't looking particularly royal or competent, but he was too tired to care.

About a month ago, a small group of ragtag knights along with members of the King's Own braved a long sojourn into enemy territory to retrieve kidnapped civilians from a fallen refugee camp, and had killed the necromancer Blayce the Gallan in the process; this destroyed the terrifying machines known as "killing devices." After a brief collapse in the Scanran lines most of Tortall had considered the war over, but the gods hadn't finished with them yet, it had seemed.

Along with the killing devices that had terrorized the northern borders of Tortall for the months preceding Blayce's death, the necromancer had also been working on a separate device, this one aimed at the consumption of magic. For the two weeks between the demise of Blayce and the king sitting in his makeshift throne room at Northwatch, the last true battles had been marked by Tortall's inability to utilize war mages. Every spell or enchantment that was thrown at the enemy, had it been from a generic university student or from Numair, who was possibly the strongest mage in all the Eastern Lands, had been harmlessly absorbed into a small black box that was always in the rear of the Scanran forces.

The only two mages who remained unaffected by the magic-absorber had been Daine the Wildmage, whose magic could never be done away with, and the incorruptible power of the Dominion Jewel, which was the reason the royal couple had been at Mastiff in the first place and had resulted in King Jon's currently exhausted state. Usually he hated using the Dominion Jewel since it seemed like a crutch and had the potential to beggar the land, but given how his – and everybody else's – Gift had been rendered useless, it had been the only tool for the job against the legions of enemy Scanran mages.

The only thing to be thankful about, Jon thought, was that it was all over for the moment.

Please, Gods, let it be over.

# # #

Jon wasn't sure how much time had passed before he heard the door creak open, but he was very sure that he had fallen asleep in his throne and his headache was back with a vengeance. Stirring to his left told him that his wife had also nodded off.

Gareth the Younger stepped into the room, looking as serious and intelligent as ever, despite his clothes being ripped and torn from the last battle. A long slash down Gary's left arm appeared recently healed. Jon had changed before awaiting news in his throne room, and was mildly surprised that Gary hadn't done the same before coming into his presence. Jon had never _requested_ that his officers report to him in clean clothes, but Gary always had of his own volition. The strangeness of it made Jon sit up straighter. Something had to be wrong.

"Sire." Gary's voice echoed through the chamber with its usual power, impervious to all the shouting he had done during the battle. "Sire, I have an audience with me."

Thayet also sat up a little more, though she made no move to arrange her skirts. She had also changed after the battle, though was still in almost full armor, against the chance that something would happen in the aftermath. Jon sighed. He was in no shape to deal with an audience, but he knew that Gary wouldn't have brought one if it wasn't important. Just like he would have stopped to change before he presented himself if he'd had time. "Admit them."

Gary stepped in the room and was followed in a very correct line by rank and order: Duke Baird, the chief palace healer, Alanna the Lioness, first female knight of the realm in over a century and Jon's Champion, then Raoul of Goldenlake and Malorie's Peak, commander of the King's Own, Keladry of Mindelan, the second female knight in the realm, and last, Owen, who was from a fief that Jon couldn't currently put a finger on and was currently a squire under Wyldon of Cavall.

Jon looked curiously at the last two young members of the procession, as the line fanned out so Jon could appraise all of them at once. Baird, Alanna, and Raoul weren't unusual additions to Jon's inner circle of advisors, but Keladry and Owen were a bit strange. Keladry faced forward with level eyes that betrayed no emotion, but Owen was nervously shifting from foot to foot and seemed to have to constantly remind himself to look forward, rather than down at his feet.

Thayet made a quiet noise in the back of her throat and her dark eyes reflected worry. Not for the first time, Jon found himself wishing he could read her thoughts. Instead, he turned his attention back to the audience before him. "The report?" Jon asked, tapping his fingers against the throne with the rhythm of his pounding headache.

"The battle has ceased about three hours ago," Gary replied, smoothing down his mustache with one hand. "We've had crews sent up on cleanup detail, both to separate the Tortallan from the Scanran dead, and also to chase down any Scanrans who thought it might be fun to stay behind and try their luck at raiding before the season gets too cold." Gary's lips ticked up in a smile. "We already caught up with a couple groups who thought they'd give some border villages a go. Buri and Flyn from Second Company are heading the clean-up crews, else Buri would be here as well."

Jon nodded once, squinting. His conjured blue light-giving orb had expired a while ago – probably when he had nodded off – but his head still ached. Duke Baird frowned from where he stood and stepped forward with an apologetic mumble before he reached forward with his right hand laced with green-black fire. He pressed a gentle fingertip to Jon's right temple, and the ache faded almost instantly.

Jon muttered his thanks while Thayet cleared her throat. "To bring the question out in the open, what brings all of you here?" Her voice was polite, but firm. "Surely, this must be something that can't wait."

Alanna, who appeared to be filled to bursting with the effort it had taken to keep silent, jumped on the opening. "They've stolen our mages."

Jon felt his headache roar back to life, even against Baird's soothing coolness. "What?"

"That magic-grabbing box had laid all our mages next to uselessness, so most who could had taken up arms and fought the traditional way." Red rage spots climbed high on Alanna's cheekbones, though she seemed to be able to keep it in check, if not barely. "When the battle was over and the Scanrans defeated… they were gone."

"_Who_ was gone?" Thayet demanded. "Lady Kni- Champion," the queen changed title, reminded that there were two such women in the room that shared the Lady Knight mantle, "you are a mage, yet you are still with us."

Raoul cleared his throat. "Your Majesties-" Jon always hated it when Raoul took to titles, as he always sounded mocking, "-it's because Lady Alanna didn't attempt to use magic on the field of battle."

"It's why I'm still with you, as well," Duke Baird said quietly, his magic taking on power equal to Jon's headache. "I was in the infirmary the whole time, so the magic-box didn't pick up on me. At least, that's been the only rational explaination any of us can come up with."

"Numair?" Jon asked quietly, bracing himself for the news. Numair was one of the most powerful mages in the realm and losing him would be a terrible blow.

Alanna shook her head. "He knew about something was strange with the magic-box as soon as he felt its presence. His power was restrained to strengthening the healers', mostly. He also poured magic into Mastiff." Her expression changed to a wolfish smile. "At the end of time, when Chaos swallows the world, even the Queen of Chaos will have a difficult time digesting _that_ place."

"Then _who_?" Thayet asked. "How many?"

"Every mage that used magic on the field of battle," Raoul repeated patiently. "We lost about one hundred and fifty people."

Jon winced. "All mages."

Alanna and Raoul nodded grimly. Jon felt the fingers pressing against his temple tremble slightly.

Jon looked up at Baird, and frowned at the way the older man's lips pressed together. He turned, and suddenly understood the presence of the younger knight and squire. "Your son," he intoned quietly. "They took your son."

"Sire…" Baird breathed softly through his nose, and looked back. The audience shifted; Gary crossed his arms, Alanna bit her lower lip, Raoul exhaled sharply through his nose. Keladry alone remained still; Owen looked away.

Confused, Jon turned to Thayet, who had gone paper-white.

"Thayet?" Jon asked, fear beginning to mount in his stomach. It took a lot to upset his battle-worn wife.

Thayet's small, scarred hand rested over his own. "Roald," she said tightly.

Jon looked up, the fear evaporating as a cold shock burst over his system. "But… Roald's a _healer_," he said, stunned. "And _what_ was he doing on the field of battle? He's the _heir_!"

"Sire," Alanna said, voice quiet, "he _is_ a healer. The magic-box absorbed _all_ magic that was used on the field of battle, not only offensive maneuvers."

"My son is a healer too," Baird reminded him, just as quiet as Alanna. In the silence that followed, Jon heard water dripping off an eave somewhere; at some point, it had started raining.

"Who was he-" Jon cut off, as Owen twisted nervously in his spot again. Keladry's eyes flicked over to Owen, and her lip twitched, but she said nothing.

"Begging your majesty's pardon," Owen said, his voice miserable. The squire pulled aside his collar, showing a long cut, recently scabbed over. "I didn't know that the magic-box would…" he looked up finally, meeting the king's gaze, and fell silent once more.

"Do we know where they _are_?" Thayet asked, her grip on her husband's hand tightening painfully. "I thought we ran down the stragglers?"

Gary smoothed his mustache down again, though no stray whiskers were to be seen. "One ship made it out on the Vassa, a few leagues past where Mastiff stands – it had a strange multicolored forcefield around it… even when Numair threw a bolt at it the forcefield only absorbed it. We can only guess that that's where the magic-box was being smuggled away, _along_ with our mages."

"Myles is working on it," Alanna added. "He's furious that we got so far into the war without hearing anything about this… Daine says that even the animals hadn't heard of such a thing, but for most animals magic coming from a box is a difficult thing to sense. Six-foot-tall metal monsters are quite another thing altogether."

Jon fell silent, resting his chin under his fist. "Mithros," he said finally, closing his eyes. Jon wasn't a particularly religious person; he paid appropriate respect to the gods, of course, but the thought of his first son being hauled away on a prison boat to a hostile country was almost too much to bear, and the gods were all he could think of. "Goddess," he went on in a whisper, invoking the patron saint of children.

"Sire." It was Keladry, the last to speak. Her eyes and mouth gazed at the king levelly, like stone. Jon had always been impressed with the gods over her: a more different woman than Alanna he had never met. Whereas Alanna would pour out a storm of words, Keladry rarely seemed to have more than two syllables to rub together. From most outward appearances and interactions with her Jon thought her brave and extremely intelligent though dull, but all that had close contact with her had little but good things to say. Any female warrior that could impress Wyldon of Cavall was definitely worth her feed, as far as Jon was concerned.

For now she seemed to be awaiting permission to speak. Jon nodded. "Lady Knight?"

Those level hazel eyes never wavered. "Permission to go after that ship, Sire?"

Jon cocked his head at her. Of course, she would ask. She was the one that disobeyed direct orders to go to Scanra just over two weeks ago, and that was over a bunch of commoners entrusted to her care. Of course she would ask to go after her friends. He sighed, shaking his head. "Lady Knight-"

"It's a good idea," Alanna interrupted him firmly. Jon looked at her warily – by the strictest of protocol she shouldn't be interrupting her king, but Alanna and Jon had long since come to an understanding regarding who spoke when.

"We can't do it. I mean, go ourselves," Raoul added. "Alanna, myself… we're too well known throughout the Eastern Lands. We can't go _anywhere_ without there being a lot of fuss."

"And they don't know _her_?" Jon demanded, gesturing towards Keladry. "She just went on a rescue mission less than a fortnight ago! _And_ killed the Scanrans' key weapon in the war!"

"Sire, nobody saw my face," Keladry said firmly. "Only the people who work the border crossings, and those who were at Fief Rathhausak, all of which were either killed, taken prisoner, or patriated to Tortall." She shifted. "Permission to go after that ship, Sire?"

Jon sat back in the uncomfortable, high-backed chair and sighed, trying not to let his emotions get the better of him. They had his _son_, those bastards had his son. "Keladry, this isn't going to be like going after a bunch of refugees through the Scanran backwaters. They have the-" his fingers tightened on the arms of his seat, "-Tortallan heir to the throne on that boat. They have other high-standing nobles. They're going to be expecting an ambush. They're going to have all the mages in the country on top of the prisoners-"

"What will you do, then, your _highness_?" Alanna asked, voice tart. The rage spots were high on her cheeks again. "Will you listen to yourself? You're just going to let them _take_ Roald and Neal and a hundred and fifty of your best battle mages? Are you _mad_?"

In no mood for insubordination, Jon glared at her, voice icy. "Lady Knight, you forget yourself," he snapped. feeling his headache roar back into life. Duke Baird had stepped back, his hands crossed neatly before him, though Jon could read the pain in his eyes like a book.

"This will be my third son lost for the Crown," Baird said distantly, his eyes flicking off to the distance. "Sometimes I wonder if the gods just have a very cruel sense of humor."

Jon looked away, drumming his fingers against the arm of his chair again. His audience, waiting for his answer, stood as still as a painting. Nobody moved. Not Alanna. Not Owen.

_Jesslaw_, Jon finally remembered, as if it were of any importance. _Owen of Jesslaw_.

"Does nobody else find this extremely foolish?" Jon finally asked, turning to his wife.

Thayet's very red lips trembled – with anger, with grief, Jon didn't know. Likely both. She took a deep breath and settled herself, her eyelids fluttering closed. "Foolish, perhaps. But do we sit by and do nothing?"

Jon closed his eyes. _My son._ Images washed up unbidden, Roald as a toddling three-year-old, blue eyes bright and smiling below an unruly mass of black hair, unaware of the weight resting on his shoulders, tugging on the gold laces of Jon's tunic and grinning with new baby teeth. Roald, on that ship to Scanra beneath a forcefield of Gifts. His eyes stung.

"Goddess," he implored again, his fingers starting to shake. He curled them into fists, not willing to let logic give into emotion.

A hand rested on his shoulder – not Thayet's. Jon looked up into an ocean of purple, Alanna's long copper-red hair falling out of the tail she had it swept up in, the heavy scents of sweat and blood and battle rolling off her body. "Jon," she said quietly, "we won't let them go into it blind. They'll have money and maps and the best information that Myles can get."

Jon looked around the room, from Duke Baird's penetrating stare to Keladry's stone gaze to Thayet's glare.

Sighing, he invoked the Goddess a third time – for his son, for Baird's son, for all the sons and daughters on the ship and laying prone in the battlefield – and gave permission.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Chapter two here. As I'm new around these parts, I don't know much about 's rating system nowadays… I'm not sure if what happens at the end of the chapter would constitute a raise up to the Mature rating or not, but whatever. Be warned that the end of the chapter mentions some people having sexual relationships in a non-explicit manner.

So, there. Consider yourself warned. :)

# # #

Keladry of Mindelan was a stocky lass of eighteen, blessed with broad shoulders and nearly unbelievable height by the gods and wrapped with muscle and fat from years of page and squire training, and now knighthood. Her brown hair, lightened by the sun, was long enough to pull back in a tail, emphasizing dreamy hazel eyes and a broad nose.

Nobody would consider her a beauty, and that was one of the more oft-thrown barbs at court – that the thick-waisted, stone-faced girl had chosen the path of knighthood because she would never have the looks or charm to attract a proper husband.

Kel ignored such rumors. And her propriety or maidenhood couldn't have been farther from her mind as she stormed down the hall, her soft leather moccasins barely touching the floor. If she hadn't thought the movement to be entirely improper, she would have been running.

It was a good thing that the king had given permission for her to go after the ship of captives, otherwise Kel would have been forced to run off without permission or help again, and she wasn't sure if she would have escaped from the noose this time around. Assuming that she ever came back at all. Either way, it would have been a shame to be executed or killed after nearly ten years of unrelenting toil.

Kel sighed and broke into a trot, hurrying down past Northwatch's stores. For more than the first time she wished the King's Own didn't bunk so far away from the rest of the command. Though she no longer served under Raoul of Goldenlake, after four years working with the Own she enjoyed their company and accepted stationing with them whenever possible.

_But at least the run keeps me in shape_, she thought, readying herself to ascend another flight of stairs. Her signature group of sparrows exploded out from under the army barracks' eaves, where they had taken to roosting while in residence at Northwatch, swirling around her body and chittering as the knight trotted past.

Myles of Olau had summoned her and the group associated with the rescue squad for another debriefing. Part of Kel was chafing with impatience – it had been two days already – but the calmer, rational part said that abject foolishness would only get her and her friends killed, and it was certainly foolish to run off after a heavily-armed enemy without knowing all that could possibly be known.

She trotted past the stables and raised a hand in greeting to Tobe, who was grooming Peachblossom, with Jump resting under Peachblossom's hind legs. The boy grinned and waved in return, while Jump's tail whumped against the ground in acknowledgement. Tobe was definitely part and parcel with the group that was going off on the rescue mission, but he wasn't required for the strategizing and thus was left to care for the horses. Kel preferred it that way. Someone had to talk Peachblossom around for another foray into enemy territory, after all.

Finally, slightly winded from her run, she stopped before the conference/throne room and steadied herself to catch her breath. Absentmindedly she wiped at the ink spots on her hands – prior to coming up for the debriefing she had been detailing the stores on the refugee camp she had headed, New Hope. It was to be her new assignment after rescuing the civilians that had resided at Haven, but the advent of the magic-box had rather ruined her leadership. Samson of Blythdin had been managing New Hope in her stead, with heavy guidance from the commoner-elected leaders, Fanche and Saefas. Kel was in the process of transferring leadership permanently to Samson, but she kept on getting interrupted.

At the top of the third flight of stairs lay the conference room, and Kel paused briefly to catch her breath before entering. She shook her head to clear it. She had some latent misgivings about leaving New Hope almost as soon as the construction had been finished, but the stolen mages represented older, more important loyalties. How could she abandon Neal, her sponsor and first real friend at the palace? Not to mention she had virtually pledged her life to protect Roald and the rest of the Conté line. And Tortall couldn't afford to just leave behind over a hundred battle mages. Every competent body was needed to fight for the Crown, so it only stood to logic that the Crown needed to fight for its soldiers, in return.

With a deep breath to compose herself, she walked into the conference room. When she had been in here initially to request permission from the king to form a rescue squad, it had been set up more like a throne room, the only furniture being a pair of high-backed throne-like chairs. Now somebody had rearranged it into a true-to-life conference room: a round table dominated the center of the room, with maps tacked up along the walls. A mage had magicked orbs of steady light to hang around the room – and the mage in question was likely Numair, who was standing under a group of the floating lights and sending them to various points in the room.

"Keladry," he nodded in greeting, a smile appearing under his hooked nose. "It's good to see you again."

"And you, Master Numair," Kel replied with a bow, focus momentarily distracted by the bobbing orbs of light.

"Hmph," said Wyldon of Cavall, who was standing under one of the light-orbs, frowning down at a map spread over the table.

Kel walked over, making sure her breath was as even as her step. "My lord," she said in greeting, nodding her head. Wyldon nodded in return, brief warmth in his gaze. Despite the difficulties he had given her as training master, Kel and Wyldon had reached an unspoken agreement these days; privately, Kel thought that he might think of her like one of his daughters.

_The daughter he never wanted, fiercely tried to disown, and eventually came around to tolerating_, she thought with grim good humor. Right now Wyldon's attention had been reabsorbed by the map, and he frowned at a penciled dot located near the mid-coast of Scanra labeled "Bergsterräng" in vaguely familiar handwriting.

The Scanran that Kel had learned was rudimentary, but she recognized the compound word for what it was. "'Mountain land,' my lord?" she asked.

"It's the name of a relatively prosperous Scanran city," a voice behind them answered. Kel and Wyldon turned as one to see Myles of Olau, who was as portly and gray-haired as ever. The tunic he wore had stretched and could have easily fitted a much larger man; the brown velvet was patchy in places. Lalasa was having a conniption in Kel's head over the tunic's decrepit state, but it was a despairingly good match for Myles' balding head. He smiled lopsidedly at them and gestured to the table. "I'll explain more when the rest of us assemble. And when refreshments come."

The "rest of us" consisted of Owen, Alanna, Raoul, and Domitan of Masbolle. The group had been kept purposefully small. While both Alanna and Raoul would not be joining the rescue squad, King Jonathan had appointed both of them to the planning council, both for the benefit of their experience and for reporting purposes, as the king and queen were heading back to Corus. Wyldon was in attendance for similar reasons, while Owen, Kel, and Dom would make up the leaders of the rescue squad. How many members the squad ended up having would depend heavily on Myles' information: too many rescuers and the group would be easily spotted, too few and the party could be overrun.

Almost immediately after mentioning the word "refreshments" Owen slid in the door, carefully balancing a decanter of plum brandy and a pitcher of mulled cider on a tray, along with snifters and cups. Kel's instant reaction was to go and assist pouring drinks for the company, but remembered at the last minute that she wasn't the squire in the room anymore.

_Wasn't that long ago_, Kel thought as Owen deftly poured the brandy for Myles, Alanna, and Wyldon, and cider for everybody else. _Though, sometimes it feels like years_!

Alanna, Raoul, and Dom filtered in not long afterward, all sweating from an afternoon spent sparring on Northwatch's practice fields. Dom grinned at Kel briefly, all bright eyes and white teeth and sweat-smell, and Kel's heart did a double-beat for a couple moments before calming down.

_The matter at hand is serious, _she told herself_, stop mooning over Dom_! Fortunately, Dom possessed enough features in common with the kidnapped Neal that she was able to refocus quickly.

"I'm glad you are all here," Myles said quietly, as the party shuffled in around the large center table. Owen passed out the drinks, and Myles picked up his brandy snifter before continuing. "I'm sure you're all relatively well-versed in Scanran politics by now, but there's no harm in a revision, yes?"

Kel smiled at her former teacher. Alanna, who stood firmly planted on Kel's left side, harrumphed good-naturedly. "Of course not," the Champion replied. "It's not as if we don't have all day."

Myles sighed, and took a sip of his brandy. "Mm," he said appreciatively, nodding to Wyldon. The brandy was from Cavall's stores. "Excellent. Not like I expected any less, of course. Anyhow, you know that Scanra is currently under leadership from Maggur, formerly from Fief Rathhausak."

The assembled group nodded.

"But what you have to know is that prior to Maggur's rise, Scanra operated as a oligarchy-" he paused, and looked around the room, "-a small group of people, that is. The warlords."

"Yes," Raoul said, waving his hand. "We all passed our government classes, I'm sure."

"Barely," Alanna said, elbowing the larger knight.

Myles grinned, and took another sip of his brandy. "It was definitely a loose oligarchy for sure; the warlords were just as likely to attack each other as they were to raid us. But now that all the clans are united under King Maggur, he has many central castles at his disposal throughout Scanra."

Myles removed a pencil from his breast pocket and pointed to the marked spot on the map. "Through the information I've gained from my own intelligence officers and from Daine's abilities – though animals are not as well acquainted with the political divisions of land as I'd like them to be, unfortunately – our most educated guess is that King Maggur currently resides at Bergsterräng."

"It would make sense, if he was expecting a boatload of captives," Numair murmured, reaching forward to touch the map. Under his fingers black waves blossomed across the map's face, affording the group a more vivid and detailed view of Bergsterräng: a city made out of stone as gray and pointed as the thin mountain valley it was located in. Little greenery flanked the city on either side; a thick river cut straight through the center of it, guarded by huge stone locks on both sides of the city which served to slow down the river's strong current and as a gate to thwart attackers.

Alanna whistled. "It's like the city was made for a siege."

Wyldon's lips ticked. "They carry precious cargo. Maggur's probably wetting his knickers with pleasure and fear at the same time."

Kel silently agreed. Angering the Tortallan Crown by taking the Crown Prince was a bold thing to attempt.

Numair traced the river cutting through the city with a finger. "I believe this is the Vit Aalv, a tributary to the Emerald Ocean."

Raoul growled in the back of his throat. "Making it an easy route for those sap-suckers to navigate with their pox-rotted boats." He took a swig of his cider as if to wash a bad taste from his mouth. "I hope they all get scurvy, those cowards."

_Not so easy for us, though_, Kel thought. The Vit Aalv had a hard-banking flow to the west, in the opposite direction from Bergsterräng, rivaling that of the Vassa. It might not have been difficult for Scanrans, who were well-heralded for their seamanship, to navigate, but less experienced boatmen would have a difficult time not getting thrown onto the rocks flanking the river.

Myles sighed. "You've seen everything I have, surely. It's well-situated to receive a human cargo shipment; my sources tell me that Bergsterräng has been a slaving capital for centuries, as it's naturally well-protected from most rescue attempts."

Kel's fists clenched, and she saw Owen's brow knit.

"It's unlikely that Prince Roald is in direct danger of being sold into slavery," Myles went on relentlessly, a carefully bland expression on his features. Kel admired him for being so staunch: Alanna looked about to spit fire, and Wyldon shifted his weight, while Raoul's lip puckered like he had swallowed an entire lemon tree. Numair looked distant, as always. "He's far too valuable to Maggur as ransom. But as for the others… I don't know how much time we have."

"It's not outside of Maggur's modus operendi," Raoul said at last, looking up from the map at Myles. "I recall you saying he kept control over his warlords by keeping their loved ones locked up in his keep."

Myles nodded grimly.

Numair gently cleared his throat. "May I voice an opinion?"

Alanna raised an eyebrow. "Since when do _you_ ask permission to speak, Sir Mage?"

Numair smiled and tilted his head up towards one of the floating light-orbs. "I'm not so sure if slavery is the worst thing we have to worry about, myself."

Myles nodded. "You're thinking of the magic-box, aren't you?"

Humming in affirmation, Numair looked back down at the map. "Taking mages as slaves is risky," he pointed out. "In Carthak, mages were… almost never taken, as there's no foolproof way to control their Gift permanently unless they're in a constantly monitored and controlled living environment, something that most people can't afford, even if they can buy slaves. And Scanra is far poorer than Carthak. Not to say that Ozorne didn't have a legion of slave mages-" he smiled ruefully, his eyes clearly moving over something in his past, "-but as Emperor of Carthak he was nearabouts wealthier than the rest of the Eastern Lands put together. Sometimes, if the slave had a weak Gift, maybe, but even then it was rare. Having slave mages is a risk."

Kel loosened her clenched fists; her muscles were beginning to seize. Listening to talk of slavery made her insides roil, but Numair had useful information. Even if the information was repulsive. She summoned her Yamani training and kept a straight face.

Sighing, Numair closed his eyes briefly, and opened them again to survey his light-casting globes. "But that ship isn't full of the weak-Gifted. Most were at least moderately strong in their abilities, if not extremely powerful, and well-trained."

Myles helped himself to more brandy before Owen could do it for him. "We considered that," he admitted, measuring out the liquor carefully and shooting a smile at a vexed Owen. "We just don't have any good information. I have very few spies in Scanra, since the people in high-power positions live such cursed isolated lives. I had next to none in Bergsterräng, since Maggur had been located in Kungnave for the majority of the war. We know nothing about the magic-box, other than what was shown clearly on the battlefield."

"Kel? Dom?" Raoul asked, naming the two silent members of the party. "What do you think?"

Dom had been standing quietly behind Raoul for most of the meeting, his fingers laced together and tapping his thumbs against each other in thought. "We don't know much," he said finally. Only that this King Maggot fellow is in a near-impenetrable slaving city with our Crown Prince in it."

_And your cousin_, Kel added silently, though by the cross look on Dom's face, he was already well-aware of the fact. She nodded. "Do we have any information on Bergsterräng itself? Or on the castle? If we're going to attack it, we need to find a weakness."

All eyes turned to Numair, who shrugged and swept his hand over the still-rotating image of the city on the map. "I only know of Bergsterräng through my studies," the mage said. "The image produced is a composite of the pictures I've seen and the scrolls I've read. I don't know anything else about it other than what you see here."

Alanna's eyebrows raised. "Begging your pardon, but how do you know that this composite is _right_? What if you've confused some of it with a Tyran city or something like that?"

Numair smiled. "Worry not, Lady Knight. I can swear by both Mithros and the Hag that the image you see here is the true one."

Kel shook her head. She didn't even want to _know_ about what mysteries lay between Numair's ears.

Raoul sighed. "Myles, can you find out anything else about the city?"

Myles put his snifter down. "Well, I can have Daine ask the surrounding wildlife to do a perimeter check. Bats would be able to let us know about possible openings in the walls, and domestic animals inside would know something of the city's layout."

Alanna nodded. "Numair and I need to be off along the road to Mastiff later – I have to send a report to Jon and Numair can speak to Daine."

"I can stay and help organize the rescue squad," Raoul offered. He grinned at Kel. "That is, of course, if the Lady Knight would appreciate the help."

Kel bowed, returning the smile. "Sir, you know I always value your advice."

Myles tapped his nose, retrieving his snifter from the table as Numair dispelled the rotating image. "If I could make one suggestion, I would say that you shouldn't bring any mages on your journey whom are Gifted," he said. "We don't know about the magic-box and its properties. It would be terrible if more Tortallan mages were to run afoul of it."

"Sir Myles…" Owen cut in, against Wyldon's frown, "but what about healers?"

Dom offered a crooked smile. "Duke Baird will likely provide us with all the balms and creams and poultices you could possibly shake a medicine bag at. He's got a personal stake in this, after all."

Wyldon turned to Myles. "Any additional information you receive would be vitally important," he said, as the meeting was obviously winding down.

Myles' return look was equally as sober. "Trust me, when I know, you'll know."

"So mote it be," Raoul murmured.

"So mote it be," the rest of the party replied, and the meeting was adjourned.

# # #

Carpbrook's inn was clean and reasonably devoid of bedbugs, so Jon wasn't entirely displeased with his surroundings. Being the royal couple, he and Thayet got the best accommodations in the building: a second-storey room overlooking the slow-flowing river that gave the village its name. The wooden room had been scrubbed scrupulously clean, with a vase of fresh zinnias drooping gracefully over the writing desk. The only minor annoyance was the innkeeper, who was so flustered with his guests' grandeur it was all Jon could do to get him to leave the king and queen alone.

Normally Jon preferred to sleep in his very ample tent while on progress, but security measures and the fact that it felt like his bones were going to turn to putty made Thayet demand an inn room. Neither of them had slept properly since the final battle at Fort Mastiff nearly three days prior.

Both king and queen had kept silent on the fact of their son's disappearance, both to be able to put on a façade of royal invulnerability and because it was too painful to talk about it in the first place, anyhow.

If there was one thing that Jon absolutely, positively, and completely despised about being a king, he had thought to himself, climbing under the thick down blankets to go to sleep, is that it robbed him entirely of independent movement. The leader of the country he may be, but he was completely and totally shackled to public view. Raiders had captured his son, and the closest thing he could get to action was telling other people to fight for him.

It was maddening. The bed was soft and Thayet was breathing regularly beside him, but he couldn't sleep, even with the overwhelming weight of exhaustion wielding the Dominion Jewel had left him with.

A shuddering breath escaped his throat, and suddenly his fists were clenched uselessly against an onslaught of tears. Exhausted, powerless, and aching. Sharp visions from his twin Ordeals assaulted him relentlessly and he was eighteen again, silently screaming in the darkness against the nightmares the Chamber had made him live through, both as a knight and as a king.

Only this time, the vision was painfully real.

Jon didn't realize he'd been trembling until Thayet's hand rested between his shoulder blades. He tried to still, but was unable. Thayet's hand slid up his back to cup the curve of his shoulder.

"Jon," she said firmly, "turn around."

A small part of him balked at openly showing his weakness, but what was the point? Surely she already knew, and he had no desire to be churlish. With great effort, he rolled over, eyes still closed.

His wife's cool hands reached up to cup his face, and he felt soft lips against his forehead. His sigh felt unnaturally wet; he had been holding his breath.

"I know," Thayet whispered. Her voice, the darkness, his aching bones and heart, it was far too much – Jon's next breath was a sob, cut off when his throat closed off over it.

Thayet's chest lowered in a soft sigh as she reached out and pulled her husband's head against her, feeling the warm wetness of tears against her breast. Her fingers brushed slowly through Jon's short black hair. "I know."

That night their lovemaking was more necessary than passionate, more passionate than loving. Thayet's anti-pregnancy charm flickered in the lamplight in rhythm with her accelerating breath and Jon could feel nothing else but the build to release alongside the nearly unbearable helplessness, both threatening to consume him.

Afterwards, when the monarch blessedly lost consciousness, he dreamed of entering the Chamber of the Ordeal over and over again, into the hostile darkness with no beginning or end in sight.


	3. Chapter 3

Nealan of Queenscove wasn't usually slow on the draw, but he found himself maddeningly unaware of what was going on around him. In his few moments of clarity he had figured out that he definitely wasn't in Tortall anymore, and he certainly wasn't anywhere that he wanted to be.

Fever-pains radiated from his brain, down along his spine, and feathered out across his body, covering him in a thin layer of sweat and causing all of his bones and muscles to ache unendingly. Worse, the fever never broke, sapping him of even the energy required to sit up or roll over. When he managed to open his eyes he was blinded by brilliant dark-green light, the color of his Gift. He had stopped opening his eyes after the second time – it was too painful.

Occasionally heavy boots would thud past where he was laying, but they never stopped or slowed; Neal was too consumed by fever to pay any real attention.

Out of the fever-haze, voices bloomed around him. Scanran voices. Conscious thought felt like scraping razors across his brain, but he had to know what was going on. _Had_ to.

"…this one?" one of the voices asked in a heavy northern accent, so thick that the Scanran was hard for Neal to understand. A large hand grabbed his tunic at the front and shook it – the movement caused a rush of cold air under his sweat-damp clothes, making his teeth chatter.

Another voice answered, but Neal couldn't hear it. Before he slipped into blessed, painless darkness, he felt himself being hoisted and thrown over somebody's shoulder.

# # #

When Neal next woke up, it was like striking a sulfur match: instant clarity. His head pounded, his stomach growled angrily, his body still ached, but at least his mind was clear. He carefully opened his eyes.

The room was small, with the ceiling very far away. A shaft of light poured in from a window cut high in the wall. Without moving his head Neal carefully looked around the room: gray flagstone floor with similar walls, though the wall his bed was pushed against was adorned with a red, thick-knit rug. The room had no other color besides from a brown wooden door, apparently locked. Satisfied that nothing was going to jump out immediately and behead him, Neal sat up, pleased at his ability to do so.

Aside from the bed, the room possessed a wooden table, a bucket, and a large basin that held steaming water. A bar of white soap with a folded towel sat next to it. Neal looked down at himself and winced: his tunic and hose were damp with sweat from his fever, and still covered with dirt and grime from the battlefield. The message from his hosts, whoever they were, was clear. Clean gray hose, shirt, and tunic were draped over the table, along with a blood-red overcoat embroidered with darker red threads.

Neal stared at the overcoat, putting the pieces together. He had obviously been captured by Scanrans; being locked in a room after days of fever wouldn't be the reception a knight of the Crown would receive in Tortall, after all. In addition, though he had never seen a Scanran that wasn't a Scanran trying to kill him, he remembered hearing that noble Scanrans preferred an overcoat along with tunic and hose.

He swallowed hard against the wave of fear-induced nausea that rose when he realized fully he was a prisoner; it wouldn't do him any good, after all. He was filthy, and the offered bath was a timely solution to a current problem.

_Channeling my inner Kel_, he thought ruefully. After trying to stand up and realizing his legs wouldn't hold him, he crawled over to the still-steaming tub of water and touched it, so he could send out his Gift and make sure nothing unwanted had been slipped into his bath.

Searing pain shot through his spine, and Neal inhaled sharply against the shock, his muscles clenching and severing the flow of power. When he was able to open his eyes again his nose was running, and he was hanging limply against the side of the tub, unable to move, gasping for air.

He wasn't sure how much time had passed before he heard the door open. The noise caused his muscles to seize again, but the shock of pain on top of his extended fever didn't allow him to move. He clenched his jaw, infuriated at himself and terrified of the approaching steps.

Two cool fingers rested against his neck, feeling for a pulse. Apparently satisfied that he was alive, slim hands rested under his jaw, propping up his head.

Neal blinked as he came face-to-face with blue feminine eyes sharpened with brown liner. High cheekbones and a prominent, slim nose tapered down to bright red lips with a sharp cupid's bow. The woman made a considering noise in the back of her throat and turned her head, exposing a cascade of white-blonde hair done up in a half-braid at the nape of her neck.

"Drink this," the unexpectedly attractive woman ordered, working a cork from a vial with her thumb. Her Common was accented with Scanran, but not unpleasantly so. Neal kept staring, and the woman pushed the vial into his mouth.

The sting of strong, bitter herbs at the back of his throat started his body back into life, as his throat seized and coughs shook his frame. Bracing himself against the floor, he sputtered and choked, but was thankfully able to move again as the vial's contents gave him energy.

"Don't use your Gift," the beautiful Scanran said when Neal had almost finished coughing, restoppering the vial and sliding it into her belt-purse. "You've been drained."

"Who are you?" Neal demanded when he could speak again, wiping his nose with one hand that still shook slightly. "Where am I?"

The woman smiled. "In good time, Sir Knight." She rose from the floor in a graceful wave of leather and gray fox fur skirts. "Bathe, dress, and when you're done, knock on the door three times. Someone will fetch you, and we will dine. Yes?"

Neal looked up at her, for once wordless. Suddenly, the metallic tang of blood registered on his tongue and he winced, letting a drop of blood travel down his chin. _Must have hit my mouth on the tub when I tried to use my Gift_, he realized, wiping the mark with the back of his hand.

The woman made another soft sound and reached down with fingers that glittered soft gold with Gift. When she touched his chin, Neal felt his mouth quiver with healing power, and was once again hypnotized by her nearness. Even with her less than four inches from his face, her skin was utterly flawless; she wore no face paint. The fingers that healed his mouth were smoother than white silk.

"Try to be presentable by the next bell," the woman suggested, slowly withdrawing her soft fingers from Neal's face. A small smile touched her impossibly red lips. "The king doesn't like to wait to eat."

She rose again, and the wooden door clanged shut behind her when she swept from the room without her touching it or saying a word. He stared vacantly at the door for a while after the mesmerizing woman had left before what she said hit him.

_The king_. Neal thought of the killing devices and the kidnapped civilians and scowled. He still had blood in his mouth and when he spat into the bucket, the noise it made when it hit the metal made him shudder.

# # #

If Neal could say one thing about Scanran castles from his brief walk through one, it's that they were quite empty.

In Corus the palace was always overrun with energy, from the servants to the scholars to the nobles to the training knights and sorcerers to the abnormally intelligent animals. When the silent barefooted slave had come to let Neal out of his room, the hallways were just as quiet as Neal's room had been. Not another soul was out, even though Neal's room was apparently quite far from the dining room.

The person he was following hadn't said a word the entire time he'd been leading Neal through the palace, and Neal wasn't sure if the man was an actual mute or simply not talking. Sighing, Neal looked around the hallway – they were all the same stone gray as his room had been, with nothing but occasional bare alcoves or red carpets strung on the walls.

Neal was beginning to wonder if he and the slave were going to walk around the monotonous halls forever when the slave suddenly stepped aside and ushered him into a door that looked just like all the other doors they had just passed.

The door opened onto a semi-large room with an enormous glittering chandelier hanging over a rough-hewn split-log table that looked like something raiders might have taken out of Haven. The contrast with the chandelier was baffling, but Neal refrained from commenting.

The table was set for six: at the head of the table sat a man in his mid-thirties, long gold-blond hair pulled back in a tail, with sharp blue eyes under wire-rimmed spectacles. His tunic and hose were practical and gray like Neal's, and he too wore an overrobe of red, but with gold embroidery on the hem. Neal stood in the threshold of the room, not moving. The man nodded at him.

"Welcome," he said in Common, with a thick but pleasant accent. "Please, sit. Your prince will be in shortly."

Neal's lips ticked before he could stop them. "Thank you," he said at last, settling into the second chair on the left, as far away as he could get from the man without being obvious about it. The man smiled knowingly.

"And what might you be called, Sir Knight?" the man wanted to know. He nodded at something behind Neal, and Neal turned so quickly he almost ran into a slave woman, who was attempting to pour him a glass of wine.

"Sorry," he mumbled to the woman, who didn't react. He looked at the man, wondering whether or not he should lie. "Nealan," he said at last.

The man had his hands folded, and he rested his chin against them. He raised an eyebrow. "Nealan of…?"

"Queenscove," he replied.

The man hummed, and sat back in his chair. "Not the son of Tortall's chief healer, are you?"

Neal had been looking at the wine; he was painfully hungry and thirsty, to the point where he had drank some of his bathwater before bathing. But he didn't trust this man, and he didn't care much for drinking spirits: too much and his Gift could get out of control. Even if something had happened and he was unable to use his Gift properly at the moment, it seemed unwise to tempt fate. "The same."

The man obviously understood his plight, and smiled sympathetically at him. "Water," he instructed the woman that had poured the wine. As the woman did so, the man cleared his throat. "You will have to explain to me how one so Gifted as yourself ended up hitting things with sticks rather than training to enhance his abilities- ah, yes, your highness."

Neal turned in his seat to see Prince Roald walk in, and sighed in relief. The prince, at least, seemed unharmed. He smiled faintly at Neal as he sat down to the right of the man at the head of the table. Behind him came two more mages Neal vaguely recognized: one was a student at the royal university that had been a few years older than Neal when Neal dropped out to start knight training, and the other was a war mage with the military. Both looked like they'd had a recent wash and both were wearing the identical gray tunics and hose, though the military war mage wore no red overcoat. Both looked as uncomfortable as Neal felt.

"Names?" the man asked pleasantly. One seat was still open at the table, but slaves began serving soup nevertheless.

"Kellen of Sweetspring," the former-student rumbled. His hair was an unruly bunch of bright blond curls that stuck out in all directions around his pale face: with blue eyes he looked almost Scanran himself. He looked down at the soup and stuck out his lower lip at it before daintily picking up his spoon. Recognition sprung in Neal's mind: the man was particularly adept at creating mage-blasts, to the point where he had accidentally imploded a wing of the university right before Neal had dropped out.

The war mage hadn't made a move to pick up his utensil, and didn't say anything until Roald gently nudged him. "Greler Strongstone," the mage said. Neal understood the lack of overrobe: the war mage wasn't a noble. Greler shifted in his seat – as a commoner, he probably wasn't accustomed to tunic and hose, either.

"Hm," the man said, dabbing his lips lightly with a napkin. "Well, if you haven't figured it out yet, I am King Maggur."

Nobody said anything. Neal picked up his spoon and looked at Prince Roald, who was staring despondently into his vegetable soup. Neal frowned and was about to ask what was going on, when the door opened again.

It was the woman who had come in to check on Neal after he had tried to use his Gift in the cell. She curtseyed gracefully to Maggur and walked up to take the last open seat, which happened to be next to Neal. Neal felt his cheeks heat when she smiled at him, white teeth radiant against her red lips and perfect skin. He quickly turned to his soup.

The amused tone was back in Maggur's voice, which irritated Neal. "This is my niece, Sigrid," he said pleasantly, his spectacles positively twinkling at Neal.

Sigrid flashed another smile at the men, who all appeared to be at least as mesmerized as Neal, before shaking out her napkin to put in her fur-clad lap.

The meal continued in silence: the soup course carried on seamlessly into the main, a glazed duck with greens and creamed potatoes. Neal and the others ate hungrily: several days without food and suffering with the strange fever had made all of them ravenous.

When the mains had been finished, the meal ended with cups of hot coffee in thick mugs, a very Scanran touch. While slaves passed around milk and sugar, Neal looked up and happened to catch Roald's eye: Roald still wore a worried expression.

Kellen let out a sigh and wrapped his hands around his mug and looked around; Greler shifted. The meal was clearly over, now the only thing that remained to be figured out was what, exactly, was going on, and why they were all dining quite politely with the head warlord of Scanra.

"Mm," King Maggur said, sipping at his mug. "Fresh from the Copper Isles. Quite pricey, yes, quite, but nothing settles a good meal like a nice, strong cup of coffee."

Sigrid smiled over her mug. "Indeed, Uncle."

Bracing himself, Neal took a sip. The drink was strong, bitter, earthy, and actually rather good. Neal took another swallow to steady himself before asking, "Where are we?"

King Maggur raised his eyebrows. "My castle, of course. In Bergsterräng." Beside him, Roald shifted uncomfortably.

_Bergsterräng?_ Neal couldn't picture the city in his head; it definitely wasn't the one that everybody was sure Maggur was ruling out of, at any rate.

Another sip of coffee. "_Why_?" Neal continued, unwilling to be derailed. Greler's head shrank down between his shoulders; Neal knew the man was a great war mage, but he was obviously nervous about the noble – and royal - company he was with.

Now Maggur smiled. The obvious intelligence of the Scanran king was unnerving; Neal had gotten accustomed to thinking of all Scanrans as thoughtless, foaming-at-the-mouth creatures who charged with war-axes in both hands, but clearly that was not the case. "Ah, a far more interesting question."

Sigrid smiled again, this time directly at Neal. A double thrill went through Neal's spine: one of pleasure, one of dread. Roald had his lips pressed together in a royal look of unhappiness. Neal felt his stomach sink.

"I'm sure you know that Scanra, on its own, is quite a resource-impoverished land," Maggur began, steepling his fingers together over his coffee. "It's one of the reasons why there's so much bloodshed in my country. Why we stoop to raiding."

All the Tortallans nodded. It was well-known that Scanrans were masters of the sea, mostly because their land was poor to farm and extremely mountainous.

Maggur took another sip of his coffee. "And, well, part of the reason why we Scanrans turn such an eye to raiding is because you Tortallans have a beautiful, rich country. You're the breadbasket of the Eastern Lands. You produce most of the Yamani Islands' rice and export it to them. If you withheld your agricultural surplus from Tyra, they would collapse. Not to mention, I am very fond of Tortallan yellow apples."

He smiled as a slave came by to refill the coffee cups. Except for Maggur and Sigrid's, the Tortallans had barely touched theirs. "So we raid. And so you beat us back. It's an ongoing scenerio, one that I'd like to end by my own means, if at all possible."

He spread his hands out. "But! In addition to your wonderfully bountiful land, you _also_ have an incredible surplus of mages! It's astounding, how fabulous your country is, your highness." He directed his smile at Roald.

"Thank you," Roald said, the very picture of diplomacy. Chills ran up and down Neal's spine again; Maggur was not the sort of person he wanted complementing Tortall. It was… unsettling.

"We have mages too, of course," Maggur added, returning to his coffee. "But most who have the Gift don't have it very strongly; our strongest mages only have aptitude with sailing. Which, while useful, is not quite as strategic as, oh, Numair Salmalin."

"Numair is from Tyra," Kellen said, looking up from his coffee. "He didn't even _study_ in Tortall."

Maggur waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. "That may be true, but last time I got a report, Numair wasn't trying to destroy half of my navy in the name of _Tyra_."

Silence reigned again, and Sigrid was still smiling at Neal. Her smiles were getting more and more predatory, and Neal wasn't sure if he was more nervous or excited about it, but one thought of Yuki back at home made him awash with guilt. He couldn't take it. "What do you _want_, then?" he demanded, mostly to break the tension.

Greler shrank even farther back; even Kellen looked surprised at the gall in the question. Roald actually managed a small smile. "You'll have to forgive him," the Prince told Maggur, "he's very forward."

Maggur nodded indulgently. "I respect a man who's not afraid to ask questions." He smiled, and Neal suddenly understood where Sigrid got her predatory nature. "Sometimes."

He paused long enough for Neal to become nervous again before continuing. "I want _mages_," Maggur said, spreading his hands out as if beseeching the gods. "I need mages before I can go about… collecting some arable land."

_You mean stealing it from us_, Neal thought, not quite brave enough to voice a thought so brazen; but Kellen's jaw clenched, and even Greler looked up to level a glare across the table at Maggur, so Neal wasn't the only one.

"Of course," Maggur continued, "I wouldn't _dream_ of asking you – or attempting to force you to serve me. I know you'd all refuse, and with good cause. I would hope you wouldn't switch sides so quickly."

Neal blinked. "Then…" he began, before realizing that he probably shouldn't say anything else that could be considered provocative.

Maggur smiled at the three clearly baffled men. "I can be patient," the Scanran said. "I can wait some years. Forcing unwilling mages to do _anything_ with their Gift is unwise. Besides, I don't want mages from Tortall serving the Scanran throne. No, I want _Scanrans_ serving the Scanran throne."

Neal was still clueless, but Greler's head snapped up, his eyes suddenly wild with understanding. "Why were we picked?" he asked, voice soft, country-bred, and beginning to tremble. "Out of all the men back there… why us?"

Maggur nodded again. "Another good question. My magic-testers went through the boat all your mages were on, and you three tested highest for amount of Gift. As for your prince… well, I couldn't very well keep the heir to the Tortallan throne half-dead on a boat." He shook his head. "It is a pity, though, that his Gift isn't as strong as his father's is said to be."

Roald went slightly red at Maggur's dismissal, but Greler surprised them all by standing up and backing away from the table, the chair falling over in the process. "No," he said, eyes huge. "No, I won't do it. I refuse!"

"What's going on?" Keller demanded, his own eyes white around the edges, like a spooked horse. "Greler, what-"

"He wants us to… to…" Greler fumbled, and both Maggur and Sigrid were smiling at his ineloquence. "…make new mages," he finished, pale face turning orange.

Neal cocked his head, still confused. "But… you can't just _make_ new people!"

Sigrid giggled, and Maggur looked as if he was suppressing laughter. "Why not, Sir Knight?" he asked, grinning apparently despite himself. "People do it all the time, as far as I'm aware."

"But I don't-" Neal began, before realizing what Maggur said. It shocked him into silence.

"_What_?" Kellen spluttered. "This is… this-"

"I understand it's a little… unorthodox," Maggur went on, finishing his coffee. "Usually one plunders the land and rapes the women, but I find this way so much less messy. If you impregnate women you have to care for them for nine months and deal with finding a wet nurse and… well, I haven't got the time. It's a lot easier the other way around. You fellows just have to be around for twenty minutes and then the women take care of the rest, yes?"

Neal had forgotten himself – his mouth had been hanging open since he realized what Maggur meant by "creating new people." "I'm not- I'm not… I'm not going to have a _child_ so you can… use it to fight against Tortall!" Neal protested, horrified.

Maggur looked sympathetic. "I'm afraid you are," he pointed out. "I don't recall you having a choice in the matter. It's one thing to attempt to harness a mage's power to your will, but a mage's bodily functions are just like those of any other man, if I'm not mistaken."

Kellen was still spluttering, and Neal wanted to punch Maggur in his bespectacled face. "I'm _betrothed_," Neal said, turning to Sigrid. Her smile was as perfect and predatory as ever.

Maggur laughed at that. "Come now, Sir Knight. You've never taken a serving girl for a tumble? I assure you, the process will be much more pleasant for you than if we were saddling a Tortallan mage-wench with the same lot."

Neal turned to Roald, who looked back in his Scanran finery, utterly powerless and looking like he wanted to chew wood and spit javelins. Looking between his prince and the Scanran king, Neal couldn't think of a single thing to say.

Maggur cleared his throat. "I've gone through most of Scanra and found our most Gifted women of healthy childbearing age. Not that we've got a whole lot of them, mind you – but they've got the power and they're all willing enough to go about it."

The words "willing enough" chilled Neal to the bone. It was bad enough that he was completely unwilling, but if the woman was too…!

"Sigrid is one of the Gifted women," Maggur continued, motioning to his niece, who smiled again. "She's one of the country's best healers."

And as Sigrid and Maggur turned to him as one, Neal's vision went gray at the edges. Maggur cocked his head. "From what I hear, Duke Baird is one of the best healers in the Eastern Lands, and if I'm not mistaken, he had a son named Nealan who dropped from the Tortallan royal university's Healing program to become a knight."

Neal stared at him, horrified that the man knew so much about him, horrified at his entire situation.

Maggur's smile suddenly tilted towards the utterly sinister, and Neal felt like a pike had pierced him in the stomach. "I kept tabs on those who traveled with the so-called Protector of the Small, Tortall's lady knight who robbed me of both Blayce and Stenmun. You took two of the greatest weapons I could ever have had, and I expect to collect in _full_, Nealan of Queenscove."

Neal, Kellen, and Greler were speechless, staring at each other, at Prince Roald, and at Sigrid until Maggur cleared his throat: armed guards had arrived in the room. "Merciful Mother," Kellen managed at last, looking at Maggur like he was a creature of Chaos.

The Scanran warlord smiled benevolently at him. "I'll see all of you tomorrow at breakfast, then," Maggur said firmly, standing up to signal the end of the meal, his calm façade back in place.

A guard's gauntleted hand rested on Neal's shoulder, intending to pull him away from the warlord. "You're mad," Neal said, voice full of wonder. He'd never expected, from the way they had conversed.

The gauntleted hand knocked him hard about the ear, sending him sprawling to the flagstone floor. The butt of a spear pressed hard against the nape of his neck, threatening to break it if Neal moved too much. Stunned by the blow, Neal merely gasped for air.

He could see Maggur's well-shined leather boots stop next to his head. "Perhaps," Maggur's voice, far above, told him. Suddenly, the boot closest to his face moved and pain exploded over his face; Neal gasped again as blood gushed from his nose, collecting in a crack between flagstones. "But it's not for you to say," Maggur finished, walking from the room.

Female shoes – Sigrid's – hesitated in his pain-blurred vision for a second, before Maggur made a curt command in Scanran that sent her after her uncle.

When the guards let him up off the floor, he was the last person in the small dining room. Holding his bleeding nose with one hand, he let the guards half-drag him through the halls and shove him back into his cell. The wooden door closed after him.


	4. Chapter 4

Author's Note: Uh, I seem to have forgotten if Tobe and Daine met during Lady Knight or not. I don't _think _they did, but… well, I don't have my book to check, so for the purposes of this story, assume they don't know each other beforehand.

And also, thank you to my reviewers. I'm glad you're enjoying the story thus far, and I appreciate your feedback. :)

# # #

Veralidane Sarrasri, alternatively known as the Wildmage, affectionately called Daine by her friends, was scowling out at the view provided from Balor's Needle. A brisk wind gently whipped her long smoky brown curls out of the bun she had attempted to pin them back in; blue-gray eyes scanned the horizon.

Being the highest tower in the palace, Daine always liked to climb the stairs of Balor's Needle when she needed to think; the extreme height scared off most curiosity seekers. But being that Daine could possess the power of flight if she wanted, heights held no fear for her. The only emotion dampening the beautiful evening was annoyance.

The entire country was abuzz with the news that Scanrans had taken the Crown Prince captive. Daine knew that the royal family had hoped to keep the news quiet, but it had been difficult to explain Roald's absence. Eventually somebody had gotten whiff of what was actually going on, and the rumors were spreading around Tortall like wildfire.

_I could do something_, Daine thought, jutting her chin out towards the north, towards Scanra. _I'm the only one who can_.

Myles, the spymaster, had spent most of his evenings complaining to anybody who had an ear about the troubles he was having getting human intelligence out of Scanra. This was a double-edged sword, Daine knew: when the rumors got to Scanra, it would help protect whatever human agents Myles _did_ have in place, but it also unfortunately happened to be true. Maggur had somehow managed to move from Kungnave without taking any of the spies with him. There was no good information to be had.

Of course, Daine was able to gain some information about Bergsterräng from the People, but their knowledge was limited to People-centered activities; where the best roots could be found, what houses to stay away from, the best roosting spots, where the fresh water was, and other such information that wouldn't prove useful to the Tortallan Crown. It was difficult training animals to be spies; to do so with any degree of effectiveness would require reprogramming their brains in a way that Daine didn't feel comfortable with.

_It's fair enough to get animals to learn to stay away from hunters and not serve bad masters and protect their homes if they want to fight_, Daine thought, one hand curled around the railing she leaned over, closing her eyes for the cool breeze, _it's quite another to train them specifically to serve the Tortallan Crown as spies beyond what they naturally know – particularly if they're _Scanran_ animals._

Sighing, Daine hooked a leg over the thin railing and hauled herself up to sit on it. _But I could _do_ something_. It was in her power to give those animals the intelligence to relay the information she needed.

The wind blew back her hair, aggressively loosing more curls from her pins. Nobody had asked her outright to do so, though surely everybody vaguely familiar with her power knew that she had the ability. She clenched her teeth.

The soft voice behind her almost started Daine into falling off her perch. "Sighing with blue breath?" Princess Shinkokami asked, coming forward to lean against the railing.

Daine took a breath to steady her nerves, realizing that in her shock her nails had changed to talons. The Yamani woman's eyes darted down to Daine's transfigured hands, but she said nothing. "Excuse me?" Daine asked politely, carefully changing her nails back to human.

"I didn't mean to frighten," Shinkokami said, turning around to lean her back against the railing, her arms crossed over her chest. The princess was dressed casually in Eastern-style clothing: a light-blue silk tunic fell down over rough-spun dark brown breeches, not unlike what Daine was wearing. Her long hair was done up exactly in a tight knot at the back of her head and pinned back with a decorative pair of sticks, with all the stray wisps lacquered back.

"I know." Daine was curious at the princess' sudden appearance; aside from occasional polite conversation at social events, Daine had never had much to do with the future queen. When there wasn't much else for Daine to be doing she was usually helping Onua and the Riders, or with Numair in his study; the princess was never in either place. "Blue breath?" she asked, curiosity getting the better of her.

The princess let a tiny smile curve her features. She had been making an effort to let her emotions show a little more against allegations of the future queen being even more Lump-like than Keladry the Lady Knight, but old habits obviously died hard. "It's a Yamani saying," the princess explained, hooking her feet under a low rail and hoisting herself up on the railing next to Daine. "_Aoiki toiki_. It means… to suffer, to think bad things."

Daine was nervous about the princess sitting on a thin railing on the tallest tower in the palace, but had long since stopped trying to look out for the royal family's welfare by advising them not to do dangerous things. It never worked. She smiled ruefully. "I'm not thinking anything else that you're not thinking of," she told the princess with a sigh.

"Yes," Shinkokami said, tilting her head back to look at the rising moon.

The two women sat in silence for a few moments before Daine asked, "What brings you up here, your highness?"

The princess' lips ticked again. "Likely the same reason that brought you here. Ever since Roald… was taken, I have a hard time being anywhere in the palace without people fussing and crying over me and I need some time alone."

Daine raised her eyebrow. "Would you like me to leave?" she asked the princess, throwing a leg back over the railing.

Shinkokami shook her head, placing her small – but solid – hand over Daine's. "No, I think… I think I must speak with you," she said, her eyes fluttering open and closed, as if trying to decipher some message.

Even more alarmed than before, Daine reached out to steady the princess on the rail, beginning to grasp at swift form in case she had to dive off the tower to get help. "…your highness?" Daine asked, wondering if she should abandon all pretenses and just pull the royal off the thin railing before the princess fell. Tortall most certainly did not need a dead princess on top of a kidnapped prince.

The wind picked up harder, and Daine's hairpins flew out of her hair, causing her curls to burst forward with the strong rush of air. The princess shook her head, apparently clearing it. "Don't worry," she assured the frazzled mage, offering her another smile. "I'm not going to fall… I just have… what is it when you can sometimes see the future?"

"You have the Sight?" Daine asked, astonished. Palace gossip flew faster than birds of prey and was often more accurate, and she couldn't believe that the foreign princess possessing the Sight hadn't gotten around the court circuits yet.

The princess frowned. "In Yaman, we call it _mishiri_ – the… the recognition," Shinkokami said, frowning deeper as she translated. "I don't have it as powerfully as some. I don't do prophecy – I'm not a… _shintaku_. You know, a person who can tell the future?"

"An oracle?" Daine asked. For the first time, Daine wondered how difficult it must be to live among strange people with a strange language – many things were different in Galla than in Tortall, of course, but at least they shared a common tongue.

Shinkokami nodded, her dark eyes shuttering across Daine's face, as if trying to read her like a scroll or book. "Sometimes, though, I can see… pictures. Like drawings of the future, or what might be." Shinkokami shrugged, her hands reaching up and sliding along her lacquered hair. "It's… very hard, to see the future. It's always changing."

"…what did you see?" Daine asked, her hands still supporting Shinkokami on the rail. "Was it… Roald?"

"No," Shinkokami replied, dark eyes turning from Daine to scan the horizon. "It was you."

Daine was acquainted with strange feats of magic, being that she herself was possibly the most powerful Wildmage in the world and she was romantically involved with one of the strongest mages of modern times, but she still maintained a skeptical commoner's nervousness about the Sight. It was something she would never admit – but being able to look into the future seemed wrong, somehow. Unnatural.

The princess shifted herself so she could look more clearly at Daine, her legs spreading to balance her weight along the rail. "And normally I don't tell people when I see… pictures of them, but this time I think I'm… supposed to. Sometimes, I'm right." The princess smiled, cocking her head. "Before my uncle – the emperor – ended my wedding contract with my old fiancee, I saw a picture of me on a procession in Tortall with a beautiful blue-eyed man next to me. I saw my future husband – my real one. I thought it was crazy, because Chisakami was the one marrying a foreign prince, not me. Three months later Chisakami had died in an earthquake and I was on my way to become Tortall's next queen."

Goosebumps exploded on Daine's arms. Fortunately, it was getting colder on the perch, so Daine could easily blame it on the weather. "What did you see this time?" she repeated.

The princess sighed and closed her eyes. "I saw you in a stone room," Shinkokami said, sounding like she had recited this a hundred times before. "It was like a prison – people were shackled to the walls, sleeping on piles of hay. You were… naked, but not chained. You were standing in the middle of the room, and the chained people were bowing to you… one of them said… something, it sounded like 'Wine-in.'" The princess frowned, and Daine could see her eyes moving frantically under her closed lids. "I think they were calling you a goddess."

Daine swallowed thickly. It had been kept mostly under wraps that Daine was godborn – there were enough rumors around her and her strange magic as it was. Daine was pretty sure that the only person who knew the true details was Numair. But 'Wine-in' sounded eerily close to "Weiryn," the god of the hunt and Daine's father. And her being naked – she was always naked after she shapeshifted from animal back to human.

Shinkokami had opened her eyes again, waiting silently for Daine's response. When Daine didn't speak, the princess added, "You were in Scanra. That's all."

Daine took a step back, pulling her lower lip between her teeth. "Who were the chained people? Were they… our mages?" If Daine was a cat her hair would have been on end with nervousness, but if Shinkokami actually was having visions, it was important to have the information.

The princess shrugged, and turned around on the rail entirely so her back was to the view and she was facing Daine. "I don't know. I didn't recognize any of the chained people… it's possible they were. I very rarely recognize people in my visions other than the person that's at the center of it; when I had that vision about being in the procession with Roald, I didn't realize that I was with him, specifically. But I always know the location. I knew that I was in Tortall when I had the vision about Roald; I know for certain you were in Scanra." Shinkokami leaned forward to stand off the rail again. "I'm _always_ right about the location," she repeated.

Daine nodded slowly, tapping her fingers against the railing. "I think I need to think," she told the princess, staring out towards the horizon.

Shinkokami nodded. "I'm cold." The princess walked towards the door, but paused. "_Ganbatte_," she added, pushing open the door.

Daine turned back to the princess. "What?"

Shinkokami bowed, the way a proper noble Yamani would. "Good luck. I just… have this feeling you're about to do something… unwise."

That brought a smile from the wildmage. "Thanks," she said. "I'm well-known for unwise decisions."

Shinkokami smiled in return, and disappeared down the stairwell.

Daine listened until the princess' footsteps vanished from earshot and then grabbed onto the swift form she had been holding in her head, darting down the side of the tower and leaving her clothes in a forlorn pile on the observation deck.

# # #

Tobe had taken to sleeping in the horse stables. Usually, you couldn't pull Tobe away from his mistress' side when they were outside of New Hope, the refugee camp, but Tobe and Kel had come to an understanding. Now that they were going to go rescue Sir Nealan, the prince, and all the other mages, his lady needed to be away from him to go to all of the long, boring meetings that were necessary before the adventuring. She had told him his presence wasn't needed. This was fine with Tobe; he had no desire to be sitting around with a bunch of nobles in polite conversation if he didn't have to do so. As far as Tobe was concerned, his mistress was definitely a good sort, but he had misgivings about nearly every other noble he had ever met. Working at an inn tended to do that to a commoner.

But Tobe loved horses, and horses also seemed to put him on a higher pedestal than most other two-legged sort. Sleeping in the stables also provided extra insurance: if Lady Kel was about to run off without Tobe, she'd need Peachblossom first, and Peachblossom would never let the lady leave him behind. Not to mention, he slept in Peachblossom's stall more often than not, so if Lady Kel tried to leave without him, she'd run him over in the process.

Tobe had just finished his nightly circuit of the large stable mainly occupied by the horses of the King's Own, doing a last run over of the tack and the horses. Everything seemed to be in working order, so Tobe carefully arranged his bed of hay, and crawled into it with a yawn. Peachblossom whuffed, his ornery way of wishing Tobe a pleasant night's rest. Tobe smiled, and started to drift off.

But then, something strange. His inner horseness – as he thought of it - perked up, like it would upon meeting another new horse for the first time. Tobe sat up, wrinkling his nose. There were sixty-three horses currently in the stable, he knew that like he knew his own name, but suddenly there were sixty _four_.

How could that be? Tobe wondered, turning to the stable door, which was still closed. The only thing open were the high-mounted narrow windows for ventilation. Sparrows were roosting there, but almost as soon as Tobe's horseness had picked up on another horse somehow in the stable, the birds woke up and started peeping, even though it was dark outside and long before dawn would touch the horizon.

Feeling the hairs on his neck stand up, Tobe got to his feet quietly, and carefully peered over Peachblossom's back. The stable doors were barred shut from the inside, and nothing else appeared to be wrong. But the birds were making such a racket and somewhere there was a sixty-fourth horse!

Peachblossom blew air from his nostrils. It's the horse-woman, Peachblossom told him, slightly annoyed.

Tobe blinked. Across the stable, he could hear some horses whuffing their welcome. It feels like a horse! Tobe protested.

Now Peacblossom stomped his back hoof. Go see for yourself, the gelding ordered, and then returned to ignoring him.

Peachblossom wouldn't steer him wrong, Tobe reasoned, and stepped out from behind the horse. The "new" horse was in Amberfire's stall, and Tobe trotted over.

And, indeed, a young woman was standing behind Amberfire, apparently naked behind the animal's bulk. Tobe forgot himself and stared. She still felt like a horse to him.

The woman caught his eyes and jumped, surprised that he was there. "I thought you were a horse," she said, smiling at him.

"Lady, I thought you was a horse too," Tobe replied. "Part of me still does."

"I'm no lady," the woman replied, leaning over Amberfire's back. "I'm Daine. You are…?"

"Tobe," the boy replied. "How'd you get in here? Why don't you have no clothes on?"

The woman – Daine – bit her lower lip. "Long story short, I flew," she said, smiling again. "And I'd be quite happy if you could get me a horse blanket to wear."

Tobe shrugged and walked over to a hook on the wall, pulling down a striped blanket. "I never heard of any flyin' magic that made you bare," the boy said. Prodding deeper with his horseness, he finally realized that Daine _did_ feel a little different than all the other horses did, but it was very subtle. Like telling the difference between dark blue and black.

Daine accepted the horse blanket and wrapped it around herself, stepping out from behind Amberfire. "Do you know where I could find Keladry of Mindelan?" she asked.

Tobe's chest puffed up. "She's my mistress," he said with pride. "She's with the other nobles, having their after-supper talk."

Daine nodded. "Will you take me to her?"

Looking Daine up and down, Tobe cleared his throat. "Beggin' your pardon, but miss – dontcha want some skirts, first?"

With a grin that Tobe couldn't understand, Daine shook her head. "They'll understand. Please, Tobe – it's important."

Looking Daine over one more time, Tobe shrugged and trotted over to the stable door, unlocking it. "This way, then," Tobe said, leading the flying horse-woman out into the night.

# # #

Neal had been practicing all day. His head hurt, his nose was bruised and terribly swollen from where Maggur had kicked him, but there was nothing to be done for it; he sat on the floor in front of his bed, tailor-style, back straight, staring at his hands.

Ever since he had woken up after his dinner with Maggur, nobody had come in to see him, and Neal was glad for that. He didn't know if he would have been able to do another polite dinner with the Scanran warlord, not after Neal knew what the man wanted to do with him. He couldn't think about Maggur's plans, though: they would only make him sick with despair.

So instead, he concentrated on summoning his Gift. After his meal the night before, he had felt much stronger the next day. A few hours after he had been awake, a light meal of bread, dried meat, and a yellow apple had appeared. Remembering Maggur's stated fondness for Tortallan yellow apples Neal considered refusing to eat it on principle, but his need for strength overweighed his want to make a political statement. He even ate the apple's core.

Finally, about a half-hour after his meal and around six of intense, headache-inducing concentration later, a green spark appeared between his fingers. Neal grinned at his success, and kept on slowly working out the kinks in his magic.

Neal had no idea what had caused the blockage in his Gift, but he was willing to bet it had something to do with his fever. And what had Sigrid told him? He had been "drained." Neal had used his Gift to the point of uselessness before, however, and it had _never_ felt like this. As he thought, he was able to coax occasional sparks from his fingers, and after a while, even sustain a soft glow, though it was nowhere near enough to heal even his swollen nose.

_I could put somebody to sleep_, Neal thought. Calling upon a human being's natural inclination to sleep was far easier than trying to speed up the healing process. Eventually somebody was going to have to come see him, and he could try to put them to sleep and escape – there didn't appear to be many people around the castle that would try and catch him.

He smiled at his own folly, though. _Even if I got out of this room, where would I go?_ Neal sighed, and leaned back against the bed. His tunic was spattered with blood from the night before, and as he looked down at it he winced even though the face-motion hurt.

The squeak of the wooden door opening registered, and Neal's head snapped up to see a single Scanran soldier advancing on him, spear raised.

Neal's body reacted instantly – weaponless, he reached for the only defense he had against an armed soldier at such close range, his Gift. His hand erupted with surprisingly strong power: adrenaline made him able to roll forward and grab the man's hand before the soldier could react with the spear. The soldier dropped down, asleep.

Breathing hard, Neal stared at the fallen man before him, shocked that it was so easy. Sweat broke along his back with the effort it had taken, and he was lightheaded, but otherwise still conscious and stable. With great effort, he rose to his feet, swaying slightly. The wooden door was still open.

He was only able to take a single step forward before five more soldiers rushed in the room, the staffs of their spears raised against him. One staff caught him in the ribs, causing a supernova of pain to explode on his right side. He barely had time to cry out before a second staff landed on his head and a third swept his legs out from under him.

Neal lost consciousness before he hit the floor.

# # #

"I'm telling you," Daine said, her blue-gray eyes even and serious. "I think it'll work."

Alanna of Pirate's Swoop and Olau was no stranger to plans that might seem insane to some: after all, it was her who had assumed the identity of a boy to gain her shield in secrecy. But this was definitely pushing it, even as far as she was concerned.

"Absolutely not." Numair's usually calm dark eyes blazed with emotion. "This is _folly_, pure and simple."

Alanna leaned against the wall and smiled at Numair's unusual vehemence. "I have to admit, Daine," she said, crossing her arms, "this is a bit… strange."

The wildmage straightened up, looking somehow regal though all she wore was Numair's overrobe. When Daine had burst in the room wearing nothing but a horse blanket, Alanna had thought that Wyldon would die of apoplexy. Privately, Alanna thought that a little shock could do Wyldon nothing but good, but Alanna was pleased that he wasn't as opposed to the idea of female warriors as he used to be.

The reason why Wyldon had changed his views, Keladry of Mindelan, was standing silently next to her former training master, stoic as ever. If she was of the opinion that this plan was as insane as everybody else seemed to think, she gave no sign.

Dom, who was sitting next to the table with a drink in his hand, appeared thoughtful. "It's crazy, but…" Dom shook his head. "I know that if I was living like that, _I_ might believe it. I'd believe _anything_." He looked up at Keladry. "Kel? This is your mission."

Alanna watched as her protégé (as Alanna liked to think of her as, even though they had very little contact during Keladry's training years) cocked her head, finally losing some of the stone-like demeanor she was so famous for. "_Koto ga koto dakara_…" she said, obviously lost in thought.

Raoul raised his eyebrow. "In Common, if you would?"

Kel looked at him and smiled. "Forgive me, my lord. Nariko, my training master in the Yamani islands used to say it a lot. It means 'as a thing is, therefore' but it's more as if…" she pursed her lips in thought, before shaking her head. Yamani never translated well to Common. "Basically, I think that, circumstances are what they are, it might be our best option. We need to act soon, before we give Scanra too much time to think."

Alanna's attention turned back to Numair, who looked like he might pop.

Daine too, looked at Numair. "You know I wouldn't put myself in danger if it weren't needful," she told him.

Numair shook his head and turned around, leaving the room.

Wyldon cleared his throat. "Are you really willing to do this, Daine?" he asked. Alanna knew that the Wildmage made him extremely nervous, but he was clearly of the opinion that a good warrior used whatever tools were at his disposal.

Daine had turned in the direction that Numair had stormed out of the room, her lower lip trembling slightly. But she took a deep breath, and her chin jutted out in a show of defiance. "I committed myself to the Crown," she said at last, turning again to meet Wyldon's eyes squarely. "I must do all that is in my power."

Here, at least, was a point that Wyldon, Daine, and all the other knights in the room could agree with.

Wyldon nodded curtly, and turned to Owen, who was standing at attention to his right. "Go tell Raman that the boats must be readied by evening tomorrow. You set sail at night."

Owen bowed, and rushed out to do his bidding. Kel and Dom exited next, to do final supply checks.

Alanna raised her eyebrow at Raoul. "Oh, to be young again."

Raoul laughed and shook his head. "I wouldn't be twenty again for all the gold crowns in the royal treasury," he replied. "I was too stupid."

"And no doubt the years have cured you of that malady," Wyldon said, straightfaced. He opened the door to bow both knights out of the room, leaving Daine behind.

Daine sighed, resettling Numair's cloak around her shoulders. She had originally planned on spending the night with Numair, but now that seemed like an unwise choice. He would be impossible to talk around; she would have to wait to talk to him after she got back.

Exiting the room, she made her way down towards the horse stables. There, at least, the welcome would be warm.

# # #

When Neal next came to, the agony was so intense he nearly passed out again.

Sharp pains stabbed in both legs and through his ribcage, and he could barely open his eyes, he was so concussed. Trying to move only produced more pain along with strange clinking noises, so he gave that up and simply tried to even his breathing and control the nausea the concussion and pain were causing him.

Cool hands settled on his legs, and Neal felt strong healing power flow into his body, soothing the ache and forcing his muscles and joints back into place. The hands worked their way up, settling coolness into his ribs and making him wince when broken bones were made whole.

The last thing the hands did was touch his head, letting the nausea recede and his vision clear. Neal cautiously opened his eyes to see exactly whom he expected: Sigrid.

The healer woman was done up perfectly as he remembered the last time he'd seen her, with the exception that she wore a long red fur gown knotted at the waist this time, with no leather. He was lying on the bed and she perched on the side of it, half-glaring at him.

Neal tried to sit up but was restrained: manacles encircled his wrists and secured him to the metal headboard of his bed. The same were around his ankles.

"Stupid," Sigrid told him quietly. "I _told_ you not to use your Gift."

At the mention of "Gift" Neal tried to summon his own, only to have what little he could produce be conducted away by the manacles. He turned to Sigrid. "I didn't know that the room could sense it," he replied, defeated.

"_I_ came in the last time you used it," Sigrid reminded him. "You thought that was an accident?"

Neal sighed. "At the _time_ there was no _pattern_. I had no idea." _Unlike now_, he thought ruefully, pulling again at the manacles. He shot her a glare. "And I don't recall you _telling_ me that there were sensors."

Sigrid shook her head in annoyance and stood up in a wave of fur. Fear hit Neal in the stomach for a moment, before realizing that she was moving away from him. She had almost made it to the door before he blurted out, "Are you really going to… do this?"

Turning around, Sigrid leaned against the doorframe with her arms crossed. "If you mean do honor to my uncle and to my country… yes."

Neal exhaled deeply, his hands clenching and unclenching in their restraints. "It doesn't matter to you at all that I don't want it," he said quietly.

That brought out an unexpected smile from Sigrid's red lips. "You must be making a joke, Sir Knight. Men who win do whatever they please with women." The smile vanished; her face hardened. "I know this. Am I supposed to have pity for you? What do you think women felt when _you_ won?"

Stung at the insinuation, Neal tried to sit up again to defend himself, but was restrained. "I have _never_," he said, voice low and controlled in order to keep the words from shaking with anger, "I have _never_ touched an unwilling woman."

Sigrid rolled her eyes. "As you say. I know it would not be… chivalrous for you to admit it. But as it is said… how do you say it in Common? Turnabout is fair, yes?"

Neal pursed his lips and turned his head away, too insulted and angry to continue the conversation. His hands were clenched uselessly in fists.

Steps approached his bed and he flinched, before a hand glowing gold gently touched his nose, and Neal felt the puffiness from Maggur's kick to his face slowly disappear. Soft fingers cupped his jaw and turned his head back towards Sigrid. She was so close he could see his reflection in her eyes, and he pressed his head back into the mattress as far as it would go.

"You look better without the broken nose," she informed him, before withdrawing her hand. They stared at each other for a few moments before Sigrid stepped back toward the door. "I'll see you tomorrow, Sir Knight."

The door swung shut behind her, leaving Neal in the dark.

# # #

Princess Shinkokami sighed, pulling the decorative eating-sticks out from her bun, leaving long, straight black hair to fall to her waist.

She was in her ample bedroom at the Tortallan palace, large and richly decorated. The bedroom itself was Eastern-style, with a large four-poster bed in place of the thick futon pad on the floor that she had always slept on in the Yamani Islands, but the colors were light and airy, in Yamani taste. She sat at her wide vanity, looking at herself in the mirror.

Some days, she didn't recognize herself anymore, and she wasn't sure if that was a good or a bad thing.

Shaking her head to clear it, she picked up a wooden hairbrush from the vanity and carefully started brushing out the hard lacquer that had helped hold her hairstyle in place that day.

"Maybe that was a mistake," she murmured to her reflection, recollecting her conversation with Daine earlier. Though she had a very transmuted version of the Sight, she didn't like telling people when she had seen into their futures. She was wrong just as often as she was right, and even if the scenes she saw turned out to be true it just seemed like robbing people of their futures if they knew ahead of time.

But it was too late now. She managed to give another couple strokes to her hair before her nose itched, startling her to attention.

Her nose always itched before the Sight came on. Cursing her inability to control it, she watched helplessly as a vision bloomed on the mirror in front of her, unable to turn away.

It was Keladry of Mindelan, her friend from childhood, and she was standing in a room, short of breath. Her armor was spattered with blood, and the stone rage that emanated from her eyes was shocking – Shinkokami couldn't remember ever seeing such an intense emotion openly displayed on her friend's face.

Her mouth opened, forming words that Shinkokami couldn't hear – the image was silent. Across from Keladry was a calm-looking pale man in his mid-thirties, with silver spectacles and long blond hair. The man responded, and Keladry's jaw clenched.

Behind Keladry a guard approached, and the blonde man smiled again. Before Keladry could turn around, the guard buried his spear deep in Keladry's back, between the plates of armor. Keladry's face opened in shock and pain as a thick river of blood poured down from the wound.

Shinkokami shoved away from her vanity with a shout, and before she knew what she was doing her _naginat__a_ was in her hands and she had slammed the iron-shod end of the weapon into the mirror. The mirror shattered, and the image of Keladry slipping lifelessly to the flagstone floor disappeared along with it.

Breathing hard, Shinkokami stared down at the broken glass on the floor. Her body trembled with the realness of the image; her hands shook.

Using her _naginata_ to steady herself – she was always exhausted after the visions – she closed her eyes. Footsteps were running down the hall: her guards.

Shinkokami was still staring into the broken mirror, too angry to even consider the guards. "Scanra," she said, taking a deep breath to steady herself.

This was another of her visions she would mention to nobody.


	5. Chapter 5

Author's Note: Phew. This one's a long one.

I just wanted to insert a warning that this part contains implications of non-consensual sex. It's not graphic at all, but it's there, so I wanted to give those of you that might be sensitive so such a topic a warning.

But I think there will be one more part after this. It's already gotten longer than I expected it to be! Enjoy, and thanks again to the reviewers. :)

# # #

King Jonathan rapped his fingernails against the wood of his desk in rapid military fashion: rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat. His scowl deepened as he glared across the table at Alanna, his lady Champion, his most infamous god-touched knight who also happened to be his ex-lover. The ex-lover part was – thankfully – known by but a few, but those few knew how adept Alanna was at both placating and angering him, and would deploy her at the most strategic times.

Rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat. Jon was going to _kill_ Gary. His second-in-command was much too clever, clever enough to leave the telling of exactly how the rescue situation for his son was going to unfold to Alanna. If it had been Gary informing the monarch, Jon would have shut down operations immediately in logical, calm fashion, and then promptly sent the entirety of the Tortallan army to tear Scanra to pieces and annex whatever remained of it, in tried and true Old King style.

Instead, the redheaded, violet-eyed woman in front of him was playing on his emotions, not allowing his logic time to catch up and issue an executive order stopping this madness.

Rat-a-tat-tat. Rat-a-tat-tat.

"Lady Knight-" he began.

"Don't you 'Lady Knight' me," Alanna snapped, clearly just as fed up with him as he was with her. "What is this, a Midwinter ball?"

"_Alanna_," Jon began again, ignoring her interrupting him for what had to be the hundred thousandth time in their relationship, "give me one good reason why _this_ is the plan that's going to rescue my _son_ from warlords."

"Because you weren't there on the deliberations," Alanna replied, flopping back in her chair, her legs spread most ungracefully across the seat. She ducked her head to better level a purple glare at her king. "You _said_ you trusted us, didn't you?"

"I lied," Jon snapped, pushing himself back from the desk to stand up. "My son – the _heir_ to the _throne_, I might add – his life is going to hang in the balance on the neck of a bunch of young soldiers and _playacting_? When I gave my permission for a rescue, I was expecting an actual plan, not… whatever in the Black God's domain this is!"

Alanna rolled her eyes. "Don't start going all indignant on me, your royal-huffiness," the knight said, propping her head against her fist, leaning against the arm of her chair. She was still glaring. "You assembled a group of trusted knights to make a plan for you, and we obeyed!"

Jon stormed around the desk and grabbed the chair that Alanna was sitting in by the arms, leaning forward so that their faces were a hair's-breadth apart. "I've never said this to you before," Jon said, voice dangerously low, "but you need to start respecting me, Sir _Alanna_. I am your _king_."

The bright purple eyes scant inches from his own remained uncowed. "Begging your pardon, _your Majesty_," Alanna spat, her breath breaking over his face with the smell of spearmint tea, "but I respect you just fine when you're acting respect_able_."

Jon had never wanted to hit somebody so badly in his life. The only thing that stopped him was the knowledge that Alanna would definitely hit back, and she exercised more than he did, since she was an active knight and he was not. He turned his face to the side, exhaling deeply to try and get control back over his emotions again, thinking of all the ways he would kill Gary the next time he saw him.

Alanna's small, heavily calloused hand reached up and brushed against his stubble, turning the king's face back towards her. Her eyes were softer with sympathy. "I know you're worried about your son," she said quietly, "but you need to trust us. You _can't_ just send an army up and crush Scanra. They haven't even issued a writ of ransom yet."

It was true. The Crown Prince had been taken for almost a week by this point, with no word from Scanra. The Tortallans had sent polite (and not-so-polite) requests for the ransom letter, with no reply. Now all the military planners were at a loss for what to do, as the conventional procedures usually following kidnapped royalty had been breeched by Scanra's unusual silence. Magistrates were working around the clock in an attempt to look up precedents, but so far nothing of the sort appeared in Tortall's history.

On one hand, Tortall risked alienating her allies by attacking Scanra without a writ of ransom – they had no technical proof that the Scanran monarchy even had Roald in custody. It was obvious to anybody who looked at the circumstantial evidence that Myles had assembled that Roald _was_ in Maggur's possession, but without the writ there was no proof, at least not in the traditional sense. On the other hand, Jon was having fabulous bloody fantasies of razing Maggur's empire to the ground, and it was getting more and more attractive with every passing hour of Scanran silence.

Jon closed his eyes, feeling his shoulders slump, and knowing that Alanna was right. He couldn't send an army out without the writ – it was political suicide.

The fingers on Jon's chin stalled for a moment, before reaching up in a slow caress against his ear. Jon leaned into the touch with a low sigh; he was so exhausted! The past five days had seemed to stretch into years with long meetings with military planners, magistrates, advisors, priests, nobles, anybody who had an opinion on Roald's kidnapping had wanted his ear, and he was tired of it.

Jon opened his eyes when Alanna's finger trailed down the slope of his nose and pulled away. She was smiling faintly at him, clearly pleased that she still had the ability to get his attention in more ways than just as his Champion. Things had never been awkward between them since they had broken off their romantic and sexual relationships and returned to just being king and loyal vassal; Jon loved Thayet and his children deeply, and he knew Alanna was the same with her own family. It was the way it was meant to be.

But that didn't stop Alanna from being comforting in a way that Thayet wasn't quite. Thayet was his brilliant, stunning, fierce partner in running the country and raising a family and making Tortall strong; Alanna was his comrade long before that, growing up together in the palace and saving each other's lives several times in the process. He had kept her secret and seen her through her training, had been her knight-master, and in return he knew Alanna would defend him and the realm until her last breath. She had proven it many times. He could barely remember what life without her had been like.

Breaking the stare, Jon leaned forward and rested his forehead against her muscular shoulder, and exhaled slowly, closing his eyes.

Alanna's arms wrapped around him firmly. "We'll get him back," she told him, with no room for argument in her tone. "We will. And we'll get Neal back for Duke Baird, and our mages for all their fathers. You'll see. If this doesn't work, we'll do something else. Just _trust_ us, Jonathan. You're a great king, but you can't do _everything_."

"It doesn't stop me from trying," Jon rumbled against her shoulder.

"We all know," Alanna said, a touch of good humor in her voice. She slapped her hands against Jon's back. "Come on, let's get something to eat. You look like you're about ready to fall over. What would your mother say? Not to mention, you seem to have me confused with somebody who _wants_ to hug you."

Jon stood up with a sigh at the ribbing, and Alanna promptly stood and took his arm, squeezing it gently before leading her king to a kitchen.

# # #

Kel set her two feet on the somewhat-solid flooring of the crow's nest with relief.

Being that she had lived abroad in a country composed of islands for a good six years, Kel didn't mind water or sailing; she rarely got seasick. However, climbing up the gently rocking mainmast to the platform had been quite unsettling. It was a feat she definitely couldn't have accomplished before her squire years. Her sparrows were clearly in favor of the perch, though: the brown birds alternatively landed on her shoulders or did joyful circles in the crisp, salty air.

Kel's reward for climbing was a much better view of the faint Scanran shoreline than she had on the deck. Keeping her back firmly against the crow's nest's railing, she wiped the sheen of sweat the climb had caused her away and pulled her spyglass open to scan the shore: no movement, only the silent passing of mountains and the gravel beaches that proceeded them.

Kel lowered the spyglass and sighed. Despite the height, the slow rocking of the ship was almost relaxing, hypnotic somehow. The ocean smelled good, and Kel was happy to be out of Northwatch. To be sailing meant to be moving forward into action at last.

Though whether the action was going to be ill-fated or not was yet to be seen. The gods had been kind to them and sent a thick fog down over the Emerald Ocean to blanket their course. Kel, for one, had no idea how the captain of the ship was able to keep them from running aground or getting the hull of the boat torn out by jagged rocks, since nearabouts everything was obscured by fog. But the captain, a suitably grizzled-looking old man who called himself Keystone merely waved away her questions with an impatient hand. Kel had left him alone after that. He seemed to know what he was doing.

The boat itself was a light, high-riding vessel dubbed "Kraken's Supper," which Kel thought was a rather inauspicious name for a boat, no matter how competent her crew appeared to be. The company that had joined Kel on her rescue mission was relatively small: no more than fifty warriors, mostly from the King's Own. Kel was glad she didn't have to be around when the orders were sent out to other knights of her year that they weren't invited on the rescuing party: they were to stay and help organize for a possible offensive into Scanra if the rescue failed and Scanra ever got around to sending out a writ of ransom. At least she was spared hearing the outrage of other young knights who were itching to go off on a romantic adventure, rather than planning logistics for an offensive maneuver.

Personally, Kel agreed with the decision. She wasn't at all sure of the likelihood of the rescue attempt being pulled off at all, and felt that her fellow knights would be of better use in Tortall in the event that everybody on the rescue ended up dead. She sighed, smiling faintly at her own pessimism, opened her spyglass again, and scanned the horizon.

Captain Keystone was purposefully sailing as close to the shore as possible, both for navigational purposes and so that they would stand a higher chance of avoiding Scanran raiding ships, which tended to be heavier than the Kraken's Supper and would need deeper waters. When Kel had asked about being spotted by villages on the coast, Captain Keystone had smiled at her around his yellow-stemmed pipe, held tightly between a set of half-rotten teeth stained brown with tobacco.

"Villages on th' Scanran coast?" the captain had said, pulling his pipe from his mouth to fix her with his brown grin. "Lady, ain't no villages on thay coast. Scanran's likely to murder 'is own brudder as 'is enemy! Th' land-lovin' Scanran hides in th' mountains." Captain Keystone had motioned towards the coast with his pipe, before shaking his head and sending a gob of spit into the ocean. " Only Scanrans near thay coast is dead ones."

After that charming conversation, Kel had climbed up to the crow's nest, volunteering to take the next watch. Fresh sea breeze brushed her hair away from her temples and Kel lowered her spyglass again, satisfied that no other ships appeared to be within sighting distance.

The plan for the boat of rescuers was simple, at least at the beginning: the Kraken's Supper was to take them up the coast until the mountains that currently dominated Scanra's coast turned to the great Djup forest: in the brief geography lesson about Scanra Kel had received before embarking she learned that northern Scanra was more forested than mountainous. A western fork of the Djup hit the coastline less than ten leagues south of the Vit Aalv's mouth, the river that cut through Bergsterräng. The Kraken's Supper was to drop them off as close to the forest's opening as possible, and then begin its cover as an innocent fishing vessel; under current treaties Tortallan ships had full right to fish in Scanran waters, as long as they weren't carrying anything of worth subject to Scanran taxes.

The Djup forest would provide the rescue party with some cover to stake out in until they heard from Daine. The entire rescue mission pivoted around whether the Wildmage would be successful with her ruse or not, and Kel shook her head. She herself didn't entirely disagree with Numair's statement that the plan was pure folly, but they were running out of options and time. Who knew what Maggur was up to with the mages and the magic box? And while magistrates and diplomats would continue their dances over the writ of ransom and war declarations, Kel needed to do something _real_. If Daine wasn't successful, they'd just have to come up with another plan.

The sound of somebody heaving himself from the rigging and into the crow's nest distracted Kel from her musings. She turned around to have Domitan of Masbolle smiling at her, hands planted on his hips. The sparrows twittered happily to see him; a few found perches on his wide shoulders.

"Certainly didn't expect to see you up here, Lady Knight. What with all the climbing involved." Dom's smile widened to a grin, and Kel couldn't help but respond in kind. She was used to getting teased about her aversion to heights, and it didn't bother her as much since it wasn't a true phobia anymore.

"I'm still worried about getting down," she admitted, scouting the horizon again so she could get her mind off of how good Dom looked in the color green, which happened to be the color of his tunic that day.

"Hmph," Dom snorted, stepping up next to her to lean against the railing of the crow's nest. "Our captain has informed me that we're likely to reach our landing spot by nightfall tomorrow, if the winds stay on course. If he has to use his Gift, it'll be a little slower, since fighting the wind is difficult stuff."

Kel, surprised, looked over at Dom, who was still staring intensely out at the horizon. "I didn't know Captain Keystone had Gift."

Dom nodded and turned back to her with another easy smile that made her insides feel buttery. "He's a wind-whisperer. Most people who have the power end up working on the sea or with windmills. So even if the weather turns bad, we can soldier on ahead."

They stood in silence for a while, Kel watching a gull circle listlessly overhead while listening to the suck and slap of water down below against the ship's hull. She was about to do another scan with her spyglass when Dom sighed and stood up from the railing, as if making up his mind.

"Listen, Kel," he started with a sigh, his head turning back towards the horizon. "I'd been thinking about whether I should tell you this, and to be honest I still think I shouldn't even be bringing this up, since we probably shouldn't be any more distracted from our mission then we already are, but…"

He trailed off, and Kel raised an eyebrow, her face as impassive as ever though it felt like her heart was about to hammer out of her chest. "Yes?" she prompted.

Curling one hand into a fist, Dom thumped the railing of the crow's nest lightly before shaking his head. "This is selfish. But I'm going to say it because we're going on a crazy mission against all odds and there's a good chance that we might not make it back. I promised myself I'd say something after we got back from Scanra the first time, but… well, we appear to be going a second time." He turned to Kel, eyes serious. "I know you're young. And I'm in the King's Own; I can't marry and stay in."

Kel went lightheaded; she had to reach back and grab the railing behind her.

Now Dom smiled. "I'm not proposing. We've both got careers to consider."

"Oh," Kel managed, before realizing how weak that sounded and clearing her throat. "I'm… relieved?"

"All I wanted to say was that…" Dom sighed, and swung a leg over the crow's nest's railing, standing on the rigging that was the ladder up to the platform. "…you're the kind of person I might _want_ to propose to someday, is all."

It was all Kel could do to stay upright. Dom bit his lower lip and disappeared down the rigging, back toward the deck. Kel closed her eyes and took a shaky breath to steady her emotions, to become a still island in the middle of a rocking ship floating on a spinning world that didn't see fit to leave her be for five gods-blessed seconds these days.

_You wanted to be a knight_, she reminded herself, and shook her head, opening her spyglass once more.

"First things first," she told herself firmly, planting the spyglass to her eye and scanning the foggy line where ocean met sky for enemy ships, ignoring the way her heart still beat like it was trying to thump its way out from her ribcage.

# # #

The nights were starting to tilt towards cold in northern Tortall, and Daine had to borrow a military-issue coat to throw over the homespun shirt and breeches she had taken to wearing since arriving to Northwatch without a stitch of her own clothing in tow. None of it fit her properly, since the fortress seamstresses were too busy producing rolls and rolls of bandages to be stockpiled for the anticipated military offensive maneuver to tailor them for her.

Daine didn't mind. While she was quite wealthy these days, she wasn't so far removed from her peasant's background that rough, ill-fitting clothes were a real handicap. When she passed through the gate at Northwatch the guards tried to stop her from leaving – they were still technically at war with Scanra, so leaving the fortress at night had been forbidden – but once the guard who reached for her saw who she was he merely bowed and backed away quickly.

Sighing, Daine wrapped the heavy wool coat tighter around her body and headed off into the forest. She loved her magic and the abilities it gave her; it was just such a shame that so many two-leggers were afraid of her power. But such was the bane of men and women powerful with any kind of magic; Numair had similar woes.

Numair. She still hadn't talked to him since he'd stormed out of the meeting last night, and Daine was sorry for it. She could only hope this wouldn't be the last time they spoke, since there was a serious risk of the rescue mission going horribly awry.

But there was even graver danger for Daine herself: not only did she court death, she also risked the wrath of the gods, which was a fate far worse. Daine entered the forest on a quiet lope, quickly sharpening her night vision with cat's eyes.

The forest and its nocturnal denizens sang their welcome: bats chattered, owls hooted, and somewhere in the distance, a wolf howled. Daine smiled, but didn't slow her pace. The sound of her soft moccasins crunching through underbrush seemed to mock her: _foolish, foolish, foolish_, chided the ground as her feet trampled dried leaves and pine needles.

But foolish or not, it was too late. The only thing to do was ask forgiveness.

Eventually, Daine approached, fully winded, an enormous oak with leaves beginning to yellow with the season. It was obviously old: it would take at least seven men around with linked arms to circle its width. When Daine tilted her head back, she couldn't see through all the leaves to the sky.

Slowing her breathing, Daine dropped to her knees, and pushed aside layers of dead oak leaves, dry on top, but wetter as she clawed through layers, until she got to black, rich soil.

In the pocket of her heavy coat was a stick of sandalwood incense, which she thrust into the soil, and a single sulfur match in a box provided the light. Daine lit the match carefully: they were expensive.

When the incense was lit and smoking, Daine did something she almost never did: blocked the flow of her magic. She couldn't turn it off all the way, but she felt the usual night song of the forest dwindle down in volume, like an orchestra tapering off at the end of a song.

She liked orchestra concerts: Numair had taken her to her first one not two moons ago. Sighing, Daine pushed that out of her mind, as well. Now was not the time. Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes, and bowed to the smoking stick of incense.

_I am not a goddess_, she told the gods, hoping that they would hear. _I know this. I know you granted me the chance and I said no. I don't regret the decision._

Letting the breath out in a long, slow gesture, like she did while meditating, she continued. _But please, understand that a lot is at stake for us mortals right now. Understand that this is going to be a bit of trickery, not an actual boast._

Oak leaves rustled above her; somewhere in the distance, another owl hooted. Daine's lips twitched. There was nothing else that could be said. Either the gods would understand or they wouldn't, and Daine would reap it down the road. It was all in motion, now: the rescue ship was on its way to Scanra, and Tortall's next movement hinged on Daine and Shinkokami's vision.

_And if this displeases you, know that it was me causing the ruckus, not anybody else. I'm the responsible one. I guess that's all. Da, I hope you're looking after Ma for me and keeping her well._ She paused. _ I love and miss you, Ma, as always_.

When she sat back and opened her eyes, a moth was fluttering around the lit end of the incense. Daine smiled slightly and watched it for a few minutes before taking a deep breath and reaching for the form of a band-tailed nighthawk.

When the transformation was complete, Daine took off and swooped up through the thick forest canopy, leaving her clothes and the smoking stick of incense behind her.

# # #

Numair was angry.

Consequently, the mage hadn't seen hide nor tail of another soul in the twenty-four hours that had passed since Daine had revealed her absolutely insane plane and the rest of the Crown – who was obviously possessed with a similar bout of insanity – had accepted it. When Numair had crashed through the palace halls in a storming bout of black fire and dark looks, all had scattered in the mage's path. An unfortunate side effect of his strong Gift was that it tended to show visibly if he was extremely upset: even now, black sparks crackled up and down his sleeves. The visible fire caused by his loss of emotional control was harmless, but still sent most folk far from him when they saw it.

He paced back and forth in his quarters in Corus, his feet trampling over books and discarded clothing and forgotten plates and utensils. In his anger, he had shapeshifted into a hawk after he'd heard Daine's announcement at Northwatch and flown back to Corus just to get away from the madness. The mess he was walking on was due to a combination of Numair's natural scatterbrained tendencies and the palace servants' mortal fear of his quarters. His rooms went uncleaned most of the time, at least until Daine made a big enough fuss about it.

"It's one thing to put your life at risk for the Crown!" he ranted for the thousandth time to his invisible audience, "But she's pretending to be a _goddess_! Of all the gods-cursed hairbrained moves of a senseless chit-"

He didn't mean any of his words, but the mere thought of the gods raining down vengeance upon Daine… was almost too much. He was a powerful man, but had never let his vanity get so far that he thought himself a match for even the lowest of gods.

Men, immortals… Numair could protect Daine against those. But gods?

"Not that she needs an old man's protection anyway," he muttered to himself, pausing in his pacing. He had worked up quite a sweat in his twenty-four hours of fury. "Or _wants_ it."

When he stopped moving, exhaustion hit his frame and he collapsed in a wingback chair, tired enough from his flight and his anger to pass out right there.

He was about to do just that when, in the haze between waking and sleeping where mortals get all their best ideas, something hit him. His eyes opened.

Before Daine's plot had sent him into a wave of emotional turmoil that rendered him useless, his assignment had been to try and figure out what, exactly, was going on with the magic box. Understandably, the focus of the court and most of public opinion had been on the kidnapped mages, the Crown Prince in particular, but none of it would have been made possible without the strange magic box that had absorbed the mage's power. Every mage that had touched it had disappeared.

The opinion of most of the people at the Tortallan university was that it had simply been an intensely concentrated counterspell: a particularly advanced maneuver that would send an adverse shock towards anyone who touched it magically. Scanra wasn't well known for having a strong set of mages, but it was something that Blayce the Gallan could have potentially done alone. In essence, it was simply a far stronger version of spells that people laid down on their houses or valuables for protection: potential thieves would try to magically open a house, only to have the counterspell knock the thief unconscious. They were very common, but could be quite powerful if preformed by a strong enough mage. In this case, the counterspell was transportation to the prison boat.

Numair didn't doubt that that was a possibility, but he was one of the few mages that had _been_ at Mastiff with the magic box and had come back to tell about it. Something about it just seemed different. His Gift had almost been afraid of it somehow, like if it touched the box it would lessen or disappear.

With a sharp gasp, Numair pushed himself from the chair, landing on a plate and cracking it straight down the middle. He tore two scrolls with his feet and bent a fork on the floor in his haste to get to the library.

# # #

Neal slept for a long time after his healings; his injuries had been severe, and his body needed a corresponding amount of time to recover from it. When he woke again, the day was dying: streaks of red and orange laced their way down the hard gray walls from the high-cut window.

Sighing, Neal let his eyes trace along the colors. His ankles and wrists were sore from the manacles, he was hungry, he was miserable.

He was also, he realized, completely bare except for a thick blanket. He shifted uncomfortably and sighed again, letting his eyes close. He was almost glad to be out of the gray tunic and hose: after Maggur's kick and his beating from the guards, the uniform had been almost as soiled with blood as his battle garments had been when he had arrived. He'd lost track of days since he'd come to the castle, but it seemed like he'd been here forever.

On the other hand, the nakedness was disturbing because of what it meant.

He had almost fallen asleep again when the door yawned open. Neal opened his eyes and saw Sigrid step in the room. She was as perfect as ever, her long blonde hair hanging down loose to her elbows, eyes ringed attractively with kohl, lips as red as apples could ever hope to be. She wore the red fur overrobe again, knotted with a red knit belt.

She stepped forward another step, and the door closed behind her, with an air of finality about it. They eyed each other for a moment and Neal didn't say a word, not wanting to start the conversation.

Sigrid's clear blue eyes studied his face for a minute. "You have slept for almost two days," she said at last.

Neal nodded once, feeling his throat close up, wishing she would just carry on with things. The fact that this union was going to create a child, his child that would grow up to become a weapon against Tortall was almost too much to bear.

The Scanran's eyebrows rose. "You seem much quieter than usual," she remarked, stepping closer to the bed. When Neal didn't reply, she leaned forward over him, her long hair sliding forward to tickle at Neal's face. "Are you well?"

To Neal, it seemed an odd question. "Fine," he lied, staring up into her cold blue eyes.

Sigrid sighed and looked at the wall for a moment before meeting his eyes again. "I shall tell you how this will work. I will come to see you for the next four nights, just to make sure all goes well."

Neal's breathing sped up slightly, and he felt his pulse hit full canter as Sigrid sat down on the side of the bed next to him, not breaking eye contact. "If you want," she said softly, "I can spell you so that you don't remember any of this."

He was genuinely surprised by the offer, but shook his head. "No," Neal said, just as quietly. "I… I think that would be worse."

Sigrid's eyes traveled up and down his face, and shrugged. "As you wish." She stood from the bed and undid the fur robe's tie, taking it off and letting it drape over the wooden table in the room.

She was still clad in a thin gown that stopped just above her knees. She was heartbreakingly beautiful, Neal thought sadly as she approached again. Long legs and full breasts and wide hips – a sure recipe to make any hot-blooded male swoon.

But as she reached for the blanket covering him Neal gasped and tugged once at his manacles, green fire sparking loosely around them. "Don't-"

Sigrid's other hand reached up to cover his mouth. "If you're going to tell me not to do this, I _will_ make you not remember," she told him.

And when she reached for the blanket again, Neal shut his mouth and turned his head away.

# # #

Night had fallen when the Kraken's Supper docked on a gravel beach, quietly scraping against the rocks. Kel had been a little worried about the noises, but no enemy ships had been sighted since they left Tortall. Besides, Captain Keystone had pointed out, a gravel beach meant no soft sand that the Kraken's Supper's hull would leave a telltale gouge in.

_Thank Mithros_ _for small favors_, Kel supposed when they docked. What she was more thankful at the moment was Tobe, who had spent nearly the entire journey down in the hold with the horses, helping to calm them and explain what exactly was going on and why they were confined in a dark, rocking space.

The hatch cut in the side of the ship opened, allowing the horses to exit the ship down a wooden ramp. Usually, when Kel had seen livestock leaving a boat, it was a mad, messy, extremely loud spectacle, but thanks to Tobe the horses came willingly and quietly.

Tobe was the first being out of the ship's hold, a small dark form that was quickly followed by a neat double-line of silent horses sloshing through the shallow tides to the shore. When they got close enough Kel saw that Peachblossom, with all her sparrows huddled together on his mane, was at the head of one of the lines with Tobe, and she smiled. Jump was right next to the procession, paddling furiously. Even though the water was shallow his legs were so short that the dog was forced to swim.

"Not unlike a Horse Lord himself," Owen remarked of Tobe, standing on Kel's left. "A male one, though." Kel snorted softly, shaking her head at him.

Tobe flashed a smile at his mistress when he passed him, and Kel gave his shoulder a slight squeeze as he led the horses into the woods for cover. As the double line paraded past, Captain Keystone came up, his pipe still clenched between his teeth.

"Don't be takin' too long," the captain advised her, taking a pull from his pipe. It smelled faintly of vanilla, but at least they were downwind from Bergsterräng, and hopefully far from anybody that could smell it. "Thay treaty only let us fish in peace fer a fortnight afore the Scanrans can come callin'."

Kel nodded. "Gods willing, it won't take us that long." _If it does take that long, we're probably all long dead. _The horses had passed, now, and the men were unloading the last of the supplies for the camp. She took a deep breath. "I think we're about done," she told him. "We'll try not to keep you waiting."

The captain nodded. "Try not," he told her. He turned back to his boat, paused, and then looked over his shoulder. "Gods all bless yeh, Lady. I thinks yeh'll be needful of it."

Kel winced, and thanked him. Her last man out of the water, carrying a pack of dried apples on his back, was Dom.

"Orders, Lady Knight?" he asked. Kel turned to the assembled men, relieved that she and Dom had not spoken about or even acknowledged that the conversation on the crow's nest had happened. Things were normal between them – if she pretended hard enough.

Kel looked to the sky. "Build camp," she said. "Sleep. We have to wait for Daine, now."

The men turned and quietly streamed into the woods, placing down their bedrolls. The first scouts fanned out and disappeared into the trees. Kel found Peachblossom picketed a little farther off from the rest of the horses, with Tobe curled around one of his legs, fast asleep. Jump curled up at Tobe's back, snoring into the boy's hair.

Smiling, Kel unrolled her own sleeping gear not far from them. No wonder Tobe was already asleep – trying to convince fifty horses to stay cooperative and silent must be hard work.

With another prayer of thanks for Tobe's help and her party's safe arrival, Kel crawled into her bedroll.

The rest was up to Daine, now.

# # #

Dawn rose on the horizon by the time Daine made it to Bergsterräng. She was tired, and her nighthawk senses wanted to find a nice dark place to roost, but unfortunately, there was no time for that. Daine reached for sparrow form and shifted in air, dropping a little in altitude as her wingspan and weight shifted, but soon she had changed from the long, loping wing-beat of the nighthawk for the shorter, bobbing rhythm of a sparrow.

Sparrows were far more common in this area of the world than nighthawks, who generally preferred warmer climates, so the sparrow disguise was much more apt to her environment. As a bonus she felt more awake in sparrow form since the sparrow's biorhythm was more in sync with the rising sun.

Even the change in form did little to alleviate the exhaustion of flying all night, but there was no time for a proper rest. If Keladry and the rest of the rescue mission had made good time, they should have arrived in Scanra sometime during the previous night; Daine wouldn't let herself think something had gone awry at this point. Not with so much at stake.

Bergsterräng was just as formidable as Myles had warned her it would be: the entire city seemed carved out of stone. At this early in the morning few people were about, but none paid attention to the wheeling, diving sparrow that was gaining a sense for the city's layout.

Cutting straight through the city was the Vit Aalv, the river slowed down by the massive stone gates on either side of the city. She landed on the ground just inside the gates: clearly, the big stone behemoths were only opened for passing ship traffic. To the left of the stone gate there was a smaller opening for passenger and foot traffic, blocked by a metal lattice portcullis and monitored by a pair of very bored, tired-looking guards.

_Easy enough_, Daine thought, leaping to take flight again.

The castle was almost cube-shaped and located at the back of the city, with one side built straight against one of the mountains, with another side blocked by the Vit Aalv, leaving only two tall, formidable stone faces out, looming over the city. Daine chirped. The city was definitely built with an eye for warfare.

She landed on one of the castle's stone walls, hopping on the rocks, deciding her next move. She had to find the castle's slaves.

Suddenly, a flock of sparrows descended, all chattering loudly, curious about the newcomer. Where was she from? Where was her flock? One particularly talkative female chattered about the lack of seeds this year and worried about the winter.

Daine hopped on one foot, listening just long enough to be polite. _Can any of you tell me where the caged two-leggers are?_ she asked. _In the stone house?_

The chattered excitedly at her, and a male stepped forward, cocking an eye at the newcomer, turning his head so he could survey her closely with one eye. _You are a sparrow?_ he asked skeptically.

_I am People_, Daine replied. _Please, take me to the two-leggers. It's very important._

_Hmph_, the male said. Daine looked down and noticed he was missing a toe on his right foot. _I am Spearfighter. You do not feel like a sparrow, to me. But I will take you._

Daine peeped her thanks, and took off in the air after Spearfighter.

_The caged ones live below the ground_, Spearfighter told her as they swerved out over the river. This was the open side of the castle, but it would be difficult for anybody to attempt an assault here: the land sloped steeply down to the dangerous rapids, and the slope itself was coated with smooth stone. At the very base of the wall Daine saw thin-cut windows. _I do not understand why the not-caged ones keep them there. The caged two-leggers are very unhappy and many die of sickness or during the Big Cold._

_Two-leggers don't always make sense_, Daine told him, as they both landed on one of the thin windows. Daine hopped to the inner lip: slaves, chained to the wall and curled up on damp hay piles shivered in a miserable sleep.

Spearfeather lingered for a moment longer, surveying Daine with an impenetrable dark eye. _You must come by if you can talk more, you are… interesting._

Daine would have smiled had she had a mouth, and not a beak. _Thank you_, she told him.

Peeping a goodbye, Spearfeather fluttered away. Daine watched him until he flew around the castle back to his flock, and then turned to the window.

This was it. Here went nothing, and everything at once.

Daine glided into the room and landed in a cold puddle. Her sparrow form shivered at the dark, damp air.

_How can people _live_ like this?_ she wondered, as disgusted with Scanran slavery as she had been with its Carthaki cousin.

Shaking it off, Daine took a deep breath and trilled as loudly as she could.

Most of the slaves groaned at the noise, as they got little sleep as it was.One woman, though, with long, scraggly dark hair that looked like it must once have been beautiful, sat up with wide, green eyes. Hay coated her body, and she stared at the sparrow with something that looked like – hope?

Daine didn't have time to consider it. As a sparrow she made one last loud trill, before slowly changing into a hissing black cat. The change in noise caused a few more slaves to sit up and take notice. Those who were awake quickly got the attention of those yet sleeping – just in time for the cat to change slowly into a dog.

The slaves made no noise since they were afraid to attract the attention of their captors, though several were scrabbling back against the walls as far as they could, making the Sign against Evil on their chests. Only the one, dark-haired woman dared approach, on all fours.

She got as close to Daine as she could before her chains stopped her. "Please," she said in a low, desperate whisper. "Please, are you the godborn? The daughter of Weiryn?"

Daine the dog was so shocked that she lost concentration on her shape – and suddenly she was a two-legger again, very human and very surprised. She stood naked before the dark-haired woman and the rest of the slaves – most of whom were too astonished to even cover their eyes. Daine looked down at the woman.

"Yes," she said, at last.

The dark-haired woman's lips trembled, and tears rose in her green eyes. "Irnai was right," the woman whispered. "Look!"

The slaves whispered among themselves, and one even ventured forward to touch Daine's ankles, as if to test if she was real.

Another slave, this one an old man with graying hair, so thin that he looked like a crawling, flesh-covered skeleton tilted his head up at her. "You will save us," he said hoarsely. When Daine looked down at his clouded-over eyes, she realized he was blind.

"You knew I was coming," she said lowly, disbelievingly. This was not what she had expected at all – the original plan had been to convince the slaves that she actually _was_ a goddess that could grant them freedom if they served her, but the slaves had apparently been expecting her – not as a goddess, but as a god_born_.

The dark-haired woman took a shuddering breath. "Our village was… taken by Maggur three months past now… they took all our children away and we got taken here. My daughter… she had the Sight, she told me not to cry when they took her away, said that she would live to see the Protector of the Small and that the godborn, Weiryn's daughter… would come for me, and for the rest of our village that lived."

The rest of the slaves murmured in the background, and Daine couldn't believe her ears. Couldn't believe any of this.

"You are from Tortall," a voice behind her said. Daine turned to see a blonde woman slouched in a corner, staring up at her with dull gray eyes. "Your prince is here. I served him, Maggur, Maggur's niece, and three other mages at dinner about four days ago. As far as we know, nobody has been killed."

Daine exhaled. So Roald was still alive. "Where are the others?"

"Still on the boat," the dark-haired woman said. "The boat is under the castle – one of the mages can open a passage through the side of the castle that opens onto the water."

Daine's hands shook, staring down at all these people who stared up at her with awe, fear, wonder, and most powerfully, hope.

"I have help," she said at last, turning around so she could look at all of them, the fact that she wasn't wearing a stitch of clothing other than her badger's claw barely registering. "But we have to get them into the castle."

"There are over two-hundred slaves in the castle," the old, blind man told her, sitting back on a damp pile of hay. "We will all help. Anything you say. It has been foretold."

"And you will free us," the dark-haired woman repeated, gazing up at Daine as if she was the incarnation of the Great Mother herself.

_And this is why I didn't want to become a goddess_, she thought, the weight of expectation on her shoulders almost too much to bear. _It's too late now, though_.

The blind man crawled forward: a couple of the other slaves had to prop him up so he could move. Bending very slowly, he bowed until his head touched the floor. "Godborn," he whispered against the wet flagstones.

"Godborn," the other slaves repeated, all of them leaning forward to bow.

Daine's breath caught in her throat. She was about to plead with them all not to grovel, when the door behind her screeched in its hinges, signaling the beginning to another grueling day, and she dove back into sparrow form before flitting out the door.

As she soared away from the castle, back toward the forest, she couldn't believe what had just taken place, and Daine had encountered a lot of unbelievable phenomena in her time. But this… it just seemed so _unreal_.

_That's one in your favor, Shinkokami_, Daine thought grimly as she swerved towards the forest to the south.


	6. Chapter 6

A/N: Well, I lied about the "one more part" business. Turns out that there will be _two_ more parts. Enjoy, and thanks to the reviewers!

# # #

"The only way to deal with the Scanrans is to make them a good offer," the copper-skinned man told King Jonathan emotionlessly, his lips a perfect parallel line above his very stern chin. He was from the Copper Isles; both his rigid demeanor and lilted accent betrayed this. He was also the ambassador, and like everybody else had opinions on the missing prince and what to do about Scanra. "They respond only to fear and bribery, as you well know."

King Jonathan's head ached. It was costing him nearly all he had to put up a semblance of being calm and collected: war would have been better. In outright war, there was strategy and results. In the waiting game, there was nothing but "possibilities." If one more person offered him any more "possibilities" he was going to start issuing executions.

He had opened his mouth to reply with the stock lines his diplomatic corps had fed to him – we don't have the writ of ransom, we don't have the authority to make a definite move – when the door burst open, even startling the ambassador into turning around.

It was Numair, looking as haggard as a shipwreck victim with wild eyes and shoulder-length hair electrified and floating in the air with his magic. In his left hand he clutched a scroll, and he strode forward into the meeting room surrounded by a crackling barrier of Gift, haloed like an angel or a demon.

The ambassador drew a quick spiral over his left breast with his middle finger – the Isles' version of the Sign Against Evil. Jon, for his part, raised an eyebrow.

"Master Ambassador, may I present Numair Salmalin?" the king asked mildly. He normally would have been more upset with the guards for allowing somebody to make such a radical breech of conduct by storming in on a private meeting between a diplomat and a monarch, but he doubted the guards could stop Numair from doing anything the mage wanted to do. He didn't know how many people in the world _could_ hold up a finger against Numair if he was bent on something.

By this point, the ambassador had regained his calm, stiff upper lip. "I don't think the man needs much introduction," he said dryly, watching as the mage lit up the room with his black aura.

Jon ticked his lip. _This had better be good_, he thought warily. "Speak," he commanded the mage. Theoretically Jon could have his head for the interruption, but he didn't think it was in his power to execute the mage. It would be a terrible waste of resources, and he didn't even know if it would be possible to carry out the threat without Numair obliterating the castle and Daine turning every single animal in the realm against its owners. It wasn't worth the risk.

"I've figured it out," Numair said breathlessly, looking over the ambassador like the other man wasn't even there. "The box. The magic box."

The ambassador's eyes lit with interest. "The one that the Scanrans used to-"

The king rose immediately in a flow of midnight blue silk. Turning, he bowed slightly to the ambassador, who looked shocked at being interrupted. "Please forgive me," Jon said politely, "but I have a critical meeting I must attend to in the War Chamber. Servants will bring you refreshments in the meantime." With a hard glare at Numair that distinctly told the mage not to say anything else in the ambassador's presence, he swept past the mage and out into the hallway.

Numair wasn't far behind, his mage's robes flapping in an unseen wind doubtlessly propelled by the visible Gift that crackled along his skin.

"You couldn't have waited, I suppose?" the king asked, his unusually hurried pace and the clearly inflamed sorcerer causing anybody in the hallways to scatter against the walls and stare.

Numair turned to him, and the surprised look in his eyes told Jon that he'd never even considered what else Jon might have been attending to in the meantime. "I thought it was important. Apologies," he said in a very unapologetic tone.

Jon shook his head, and didn't stop when they approached the War Chamber. Numair didn't react, but he slowed to be able to follow Jon's movements. Eventually they turned down a small corridor just behind the Hall of Mirrors, a place that was very rarely frequented with the exception of special palace events requiring grand tours of the castle.

Numair raised an eyebrow at the small, cramped hallway that apparently dead-ended, and Jon smiled slightly. "My Gift will never be as great as yours, but Conte blood gives me certain privileges in my own castle. I wanted this first meeting to be private – I trust you haven't told anybody else yet?"

"No." In his interest at the strange quarters, Numair's visible sparks lessened slightly. "I thought you would want the information first."

The king nodded. "Very good." Reaching up, he placed a hand on one of the stones on the back wall of the dead end. A soft red glow flared behind his hand, and an arch appeared where a solid wall had been before.

"Blood magic," Numair said, impressed. "Do you know who the sacrifice was?"

Shaking his head, the king walked inside the arch. Numair quickly followed, and the opening melted back into the wall. The hidden room was a small, simple conference room, windowless with a plain wooden table and chairs in the middle, and completely unadorned. Flameless globes swung on old chains in the corners, which flickered into life as soon as the arch had faded. Strangely, there was no dust to be seen anywhere.

Without a door or windows the small room was unsettlingly jail-like, but very private. No soul could enter nor break in with listening spells, so long as the Conte line held the throne.

Jon grimaced at the question and pulled out one of the chairs to sit down. "I have no idea, and I don't want to know." Blood magic was the most powerful there was, but the cravat was that there needed to be a willing sacrifice to make it happen – a person who was willing to die a very slow and drawn-out death in order for the magic to be set. "I figure he or she must have been young; it's strong."

Numair nodded, and unrolled the scroll on the table. "You're going to know exactly what this is when you see it," Numair said, running his hands against the crumpled parchment to smooth the symbols scrawled on it. "We're all seven kinds of idiot."

Jon stared. He had known what it was the moment Numair had opened the scroll – how could he forget the spell that had almost torn Tortall to pieces? He knew more about the Gate of Idramm than he wanted to know.

"How is this possible?" Jon asked, looking up at the mage, whose mouth was set in a firm line. "The Gate calls _spirits_-"

"Traditionally," the mage interrupted, and Jon sighed, vexed at never being able to finish a thought around his advisors. "However, it can be manipulated to draw Gift, rather than elementals or whatever else happens to be around. The problem with using the Gate to draw spirits is that it can be quite uncontrollable; it's far easier to contain Gift that's detached from its owner than spirits with wills – and quite possibly minds – of their own."

The king drummed his fingers against the table. "What about the counterspell theory?"

Numair shook his head. "A counterspell is, by definition instantaneous – if it _had_ been a counterspell, then the transportation to the boat would have happened immediately. The mages didn't disappear right away; their Gift was merely ineffectual. If our mages had started disappearing instantly, we would have switched tactics to a non-magical-based offensive, and thus lost fewer of them than we did this way. That was the problem with the counterspell theory… there was just too much time between our mages casting spells and then disappearing."

Rat-a-tat-tat. Rat-a-tat-tat. Jon glared down at the piece of paper. The lettering looked oddly familiar too him, and it made him upset, though he couldn't figure out why.

Clearing his throat, the mage went on. "Not to mention, creating a counterspell strong enough not only to have a long delay between the mages casting and disappearing but taking away so _many_ of them… I'll be honest when I say that I have no idea how powerful Blayce was. I know he had to be quite adept, but even _I_ couldn't create such a strong counterspell mechanism on my own. The only way it could possibly be accomplished is with willing sacrifices or assistance from the gods. Truly willing sacrifices are very rare… and Blayce was a necromancer. The gods hate necromancy, since it disturbs the natural balance of life and death."

Jon looked up from the scroll, and leaned back into his seat. "Why a box? Isn't it usually a gate? Hence, _Gate_ of Idramm?"

Numair shook his head. "I can only imagine the box was more of a spatial issue… it's easier to transport than a gate. It also kept us from recognizing what was going on: I can tell you that if I'd seen a giant gate of magic rising behind the Scanrans, I'd've picked up on this quicker." He pointed to a line in the lettering and hesitated, shooting a questioning glance at Jon.

The king smiled wanly. "No, Numair, I can't read it. I know what it is, of course, but I've never tried to conjure one myself."

Smiling, Numair underlined a part of the scroll with his fingers. "It's in the language of the Old Ones… this part specifically calls for a _gate_ of magic, but if somebody had sufficient knowledge of the language, it wouldn't be difficult to manipulate the spell to a smaller cube."

Jon frowned at the part of the scroll Numair had pointed to, and Numair cleared his throat. "Not to mention, if it had been a counterspell Blayce would have had to provide all the power before the spell was activated, which would be nearly impossible without willing sacrifices or intervention from the gods… since the Gate is programmed to _absorb_ power rather than simply provide a counteraction, it would get stronger and stronger the more Gift was thrown at it. In essence, our war mages kidnapped themselves with their own power. The more they fought, the more powerful the Gate became, and when it hit a certain level, it was able to steal them." Shaking his head, Numair looked up from the scroll. "The logic is quite ingenious, really. Unfortunately for us, Blayce was a clever one."

Crossing his arms, Jon looked up from the scroll again. "What does this tell us?" he demanded. "Is there anything that can be gained from this strategically?"

Numair rolled up the scroll again, sighing. "Well, you know as well as I do that there are only two ways to dispel the gate – either you have to destroy the mage's focus, or kill or otherwise sever the mage's tie connected to the gate. We don't know who the living carrier is… it's obviously not Blayce, and he must have passed the written workings off to another mage before he died."

Falling silent, the mage twisted the scroll in his hands until Jon prompted, "What else?"

Numair sighed again, this time deeper. He met Jon's eyes. "I don't like it," he said flatly. "A Gate of Idramm is almost never an end unto itself… it's used as a power repository to be funneled into greater workings… like the one on your coronation day was used to fuel the earthquake. And, as you know… that gate didn't nearly have as much power in it as the magic box does right now."

The hairs on the back of Jon's neck stood up, but his face betrayed none of it. "You're saying that you think that they're planning on using the power for something else."

"I can only assume," Numair replied. "Losing our mages was a crippling blow, but it would be… overly optimistic to assume that Maggur has sucked away all that power and doesn't plan to use it for anything."

Jon stood up. "I'll have to share this with Gary. And Thayet."

"We should also get word out to Daine," Numair pointed out. If Jon noticed that Numair sparked anew at the mention of his lover's name, the king was prudent enough not to comment. "She and the rescue force are the ones who need to know about this. In addition to trying to rescue the mages, they should try and figure out who the Gate's living carrier is."

"Normally we'd send a message via firechat, but considering how there's a strict no-Gift moratorium on the rescue party, I don't know… messenger birds, I suppose. Though, I'd hate for the bird to get waylaid…"

Jon trailed off when he realized that Numair was smiling down at his knees. The king leaned forward over the table to realize that a young dragon, whose head was just level with Numair's hips, cocked a blue eye up at him. Kitten, as the dragon was called, chirped at the king impatiently.

"I suppose blood spells don't stop dragons," the king remarked. Kitten snorted, a wisp of white smoke trailing upwards, and switched her long tail back and forth as if to say _please_.

Numair smiled wider. "Not much does, Sire."

# # #

Daine was half blind with exhaustion when she finally located the small rescue party about half a league in from the coast. Horses quietly cropped at the sparse grass that grew under the trees, but all of them drew their heads up and pricked their ears forward as she darted down under the canopy.

Keladry of Mindelan, looking much like a female giant in Daine's current miniscule form, sat under a tree frowning at a piece of paper in her hand. Daine angled down towards the girl, hitting the ground with an ungraceful thud, sending up a cloud of dust in her wake.

Kel had jerked her head up at the sparrow's unusual landing, and Daine saw Keladry fade into color as her sight changed back into human, as well as lose some of her giant-like qualities. Fully human her exhaustion hit her fully, and she was unable to sit up.

"Daine?" Kel asked, slightly panicked. Daine closed her eyes against the ground and heard Kel do some hurried shifting before soft cloth settled over her shoulders. "Wait here – we have some restorative potions somewhere." Kel's boots scuffled against the ground and Daine heard her steps walk away.

As she lay on the ground, Daine could only think about how irritated she was with herself for forgetting she was naked when she shapeshifted. She couldn't _ever_ remember making a mistake with that before when she shifted on purpose.

Soon, Kel returned. "Can you drink this by yourself?" she asked, kneeling next to Daine without waiting for an answer. Cool liquid ran down Daine's throat, stinging with herbs and strong magic, and soon Daine felt energy flow through her veins, enough for her to be able to sit up properly.

Kel looked at her quietly while Daine properly changed into the article of clothing Kel had handed her – a pale brown tunic. Thankfully, since Kel was much taller than Daine the garment almost reached past her knees.

"You'll still need to sleep soon," Kel offered, as soon as Daine had gotten herself covered.

Daine took a deep breath, thankful for Kel's legendary patience. A lesser person would have immediately started pelting Daine with questions, but Kel sat straight and still, hazel eyes level, betraying no sign of irritation. "I know. I've been awake for… almost a day and a half by this point."

Kel nodded. "We'll make sure you're taken care of."

Daine shook her head – it would probably be easier to shift into animal form and sleep in a tree, though she appreciated the offer. "Well… you'll be happy to know that I was successful, though not in the way I expected to be."

Raising an eyebrow, Kel twiddled the piece of paper in her fingers, and nodded at something just behind Daine's shoulder. Daine heard Kitten's trill before she saw the dragon, and she smiled at the dragonet.

"Hey there, trouble," Daine said, reaching out to run a finger along the sensitive skin underneath the dragon's chin. Kitten tilted her head back to allow for a deeper massage, and Daine obliged. "What brings you here?"

"She brought us a message," Kel said, holding up the piece of paper between two fingers. "It's got some interesting information… but I'm more interested in what _you_ have to say."

Daine sighed, and gently pressed a hand against her head. While the potion had killed off the debilitating exhaustion, her body was still drained and her head was beginning to whirl while she decided where to start. Kitten hummed worriedly in the back of her throat, before turning around to whistle at something behind Daine.

A hand appeared under Daine's nose with a buttered piece of bread. "Sorry it's not hot," Dom told her, a cheeky smile spreading across his mouth. "Orders from the Lady Knight are not to make fires, just in case." He offered his other hand, which was full of dried apple slices.

"Thanks," Daine said gratefully, taking the bread. She gave an apple slice to Kitten as Dom settled himself under the tree next to Kel, close enough to make the conversation intimate, but far enough away to be proper about it.

Between bites of bread, Daine explained what had happened when she'd located the castle's slaves and how they had expected her. Dom pursed his upper lip and nodded along with the story while Kel's eyes crinkled in thought.

"One of the slaves has a child who was a seer?" Kel asked, when Daine had finished.

Daine nodded, surprised Kel had taken up on what Daine had considered an insignificant detail. "Yeah. She mentioned her name, something that started with the letter I."

"Irnai," both Kel and Dom chorused, looking at each other knowingly.

Daine raised an eyebrow, popping an apple slice in her mouth. She nodded. "You know her?"

"She was with the village from Fief Rathhausak Kel and I brought back on our last mission," Dom explained. He had his knees tucked up against his chest, and he locked his arms around them. "Small world," he said absently.

Kel exhaled heavily through her nose. "First off, praise Mithros that we made it here in one piece, you were successful with the slaves, and none of our mages have been killed yet. That's a lot to be thankful for."

"So mote," Dom repeated with feeling. Daine hummed in agreement; her mouth was too full of apple and bread to respond properly. Kitten croaked and switched her tail as she sniffed at Daine's hand for more apple slices. Dom smiled and produced another handful from his belt-purse.

Cocking her head to the sky, Kel ran a hand through her hair. "And if the entrance to the city is weakly guarded, we should be able to overrun them easily, hopefully before they can get word to their friends."

"What about the ramparts?" Dom wanted to know, looking up from where Kitten carefully inspected the handful of apple slices he had. "Did they have men?"

Daine frowned. "I can't remember," she admitted. "You'll have to remember that I'm not schooled in soldiering and this is actually the first time I've done scouting for an _offensive_ maneuver; I don't quite know what to look for."

Dom grinned; even Kel flashed a smile. "It's time you learned, then," Dom said.

Kel stood from the ground. "But first, you probably need to sleep," she said as the Wildmage smothered a yawn. "We'll need to make a list of things for you to look for on your second scouting trip. You could also take the other sparrows – provided we can get Qasim to stop giving them treats long enough to be useful."

"He's almost as bad as you are," Dom retorted, standing up also and brushing pine needles off his clothing. "We'll also need to find a way to raise the portcullis, since we don't have mages."

"Kit can do it," Daine replied, beginning to mound a pile of pine needles to lie on. Sleep was beginning to tug at her head despite the energy potion; she didn't even think she'd be able to make it back to camp. "She's good with magicking metals. She can open 'em, close 'em, heat 'em, you name it."

Kitten croaked in affirmation, causing the buckle on Dom's belt to slide open. Kel smothered something that almost sounded like a _giggle_ to Daine's exhausted ears. Nearly unconscious, Daine's form shifted to a shaggy-haired hunting dog, which curled up inside Kel's tunic on top of the pine needles.

The last thing she heard before falling asleep was Dom asking, "Do you think Kit could heat a pot for a long period of time? I would _kill_ for a hot meal, by the Hag's dice."

# # #

Kel dipped a foot into the pool and smiled. While the weather was turning cold in Scanra along with the season, the area was blessed by several hot water springs buried deep underground. The small natural pool smelled slightly of rotten eggs with the sulfur, but it was as warm as the palace baths and very clear.

Turning to Jump and the flock of sparrows who were all watching her curiously, she instructed, "Don't let anybody come by. If somebody needs me, come get me, okay?"

Jump's tail whumped against the ground in acknowledgement, while her sparrow group leaped off the ground for the trees. With her animal consort otherwise occupied, Kel stripped under a large oak tree, with the exception of an ankle-mounted dagger.

It was somewhat foolish to go off into the woods to bathe alone without a human escort, but there wasn't anybody who was two-legger she could ask, being that the rest of the rescue party was male and Daine was still in deep sleep from her long journey. The animals would do, though, and she was adept enough with a dagger to protect herself from most would-be attackers.

Shivering slightly, Kel quickly splashed into the warm water pool, grateful to be able to scrub some of the stink out of her pores. She hadn't been able to properly bathe since leaving the Tortallan coast. When the water was as deep as her shoulders, she submerged herself.

The news from Corus that Kitten had brought was interesting, indeed; Numair had finally figured out what the magic-box was likely to be. It added yet another uncertain dimension to their rescue efforts: now there was likely to be an enemy mage somewhere in the castle that had the power of over a hundred other mages locked up in the box-spell. It could prove problematic, especially since her own group had no mages.

_Not that it would matter, considering that one mage would never be able to stand up against the power in that spell_, Kel thought, crouching into a ball at the bottom of the pool. The water was clear, so much that when Kel opened her eyes, she could make out a pair of man's legs walking towards her.

Shocked, Kel gasped, inhaling water. In a forced maneuver she grabbed her dagger from its holster and shot up towards the surface, breaking it with a wet cough and holding up the weapon in the direction of the person walking towards her.

Dom, waist-deep in the pool and just as naked as she was, looked unimpressed with Kel's spluttering. "I'd pat you on the back to help clear your lungs, but I'd rather not get stabbed."

Kel let the hand holding the dagger drop, and she scuttled to the other side of the small pool, where she could get better footing. After spitting up bitter spring water, she flipped her hair back away from her eyes and glared. "_What_ in the name of the Goddess are you _doing_?" she hissed.

"Bathing," Dom pointed out, stepping forward to slide under the water. Kel stepped further back away from him, and turned her glare to the small group of sparrows that zipped into the clearing.

"Why didn't you tell me somebody was coming?" she asked the flock, surprised. They had never failed her before. The birds dropped to eye-level, and then flew in a tight circle, the symbol for "friend."

Kel sighed as Dom broke the surface of the water again, throwing his head back and causing a crescent of water to erupt from his hair. "For future reference, two-legger _friends_ do not bathe together," she told the birds.

One of the sparrows chirruped in acknowledgement and the flock headed back to the trees.

"This is a nice pool," Dom said casually, rubbing his hands against his face to clear the water away. "The Scanrans should start a resort business up here. They'd make so much money off of rich nobles they wouldn't have to kill each other anymore."

"You need to get out," Kel said flatly, ignoring the way her mouth went dry at his form – she had seen him shirtless before, of course, but this was another matter entirely.

Dom cocked his head, looking rather like a sparrow. "Why?"

"Because _I_ can't get out until _you_ do," Kel replied. "And what if one of the other men comes and sees this?"

"They won't," Dom said, bending his knees so that the water reached up to his neck. "Besides, you know the rules. You can't go off on your own without another person. It's unsafe."

He was being so reasonable that Kel wanted to smack him. She crossed her arms over her chest. "This isn't very chivalrous," she said poisonously.

Dom smiled, blue eyes bright against the water. "Thank Mithros I'm not a knight," he said cheerfully. "Chivalry can be moronic, sometimes."

Kel shook his head. "You're as bad as your cousin," Kel retorted. "Worse, actually. I can't see Neal bathing with a lady uninvited."

"Meathead's too self-conscious," Dom said dismissively. Now that he seemed surer that she wasn't going to stab him, he moved a little closer. "He'd think that the lady would tell him his elbows were too pointy or his neck was too long or something else. And then there's that chivalry thing. Speaking of my poor imprisoned cousin, what do you think our next moves are going to be?"

Kel floated in the water, debating on whether she was going to go along with his clever change of subject or not. She bit. "If the defenses are as bad as Daine says, we should be able to get in by the front door. I brought griffin-fletched arrows in case we have to shoot men on the ramparts: with a strong crossbow, it'll be harder to miss. The dragon – Kitten – can open the portcullis for us, and then hopefully go with Daine to free the slaves, since Kitten can unlock the doors." Kel sighed, uncrossing her arms. "Daine can probably take care of any guards that are with the slaves – turn into a bear or something."

Dom smiled, stepping forward into the deepest part of the pool – he had to tread water to keep his head above the surface. "Doesn't sound like a bad plan to me. What about the magic-box?"

Kel's eyes were locked on Dom's slow approach, debating on whether or not she should say something. Obviously she _should_, but a greater part of her was more interested in what, exactly, he was trying to do. "There's not much we can do about that," she admitted. "We don't have any mages, and we can't use any Gift-based magic anyhow until the box is destroyed. The only thing to hope for is that if the mage that controls the box decides to blow us all up, it kills Maggur in the process and destroys the magic-box."

Dom was nearly right in front of her, now. Kel felt her body heat rise: she wasn't sure if it was because of his nearness, her own reaction to him, or simply being in the pool too long. When he spoke, his voice was a quiet, deep rumble. "Well-planned, Lady Knight."

Kel took a deep breath before looking up – but not by much. Kel and Dom were almost of a height. "All right, Dom, what are you playing at?"

Dom shifted, sending little waves rippling through the water to collide with Kel's chest. "You never said anything when we spoke on the boat," he said.

"You never asked me anything," she reminded him. "You just… made some vague plans for the future and then nearly jumped out of the crow's nest, if I recall."

Now Dom smiled, though it was clear the movement was nervous. "My mistake, then," he said, a hand reaching up out of the water. Kel didn't move as he touched her hair, pulling out a yellow elm leaf. "If, theoretically, I proposed to you in the distant future, would you, theoretically, consider the offer?"

Kel made a face. "That's probably the most mealy-mouthed statement-"

Dom cut her off by surging forward, covering her mouth with his own. Kel jumped slightly at the sudden movement, almost choking on her words. His lips were soft and warm like the water, like the sand beneath her feet and he stepped forward, his body following his kiss, pressing their skin together. And it wasn't just Kel – Dom's bare skin felt overheated and she could feel his pulse rise beneath her fingers.

Kel broke the kiss and leaned back, feeling her own heartbeat hammering in her ears like a military march. She opened her mouth to say something, but all that came out was a long, hot breath.

Dom smiled now, but his voice was just as gravelly as before. "Less mealy-mouthed?" he asked.

Kel had to fight her lungs to get them to intake air. "If, theoretically, you asked my future theoretical self to be involved in a theoretical state of matrimony, then…"

"Theoretically you'd say?" Dom prompted.

"Theoretically I might consider it," Kel said, causing Dom to erupt in an electric grin that sent nervous energy down Kel's spine.

Now Kel sighed, unable to take the pressure. "Look, can we just… we're in enemy territory," she pointed out. "If we're going to go to bed together, I'd rather it not happen in a Scanran forest when we should be rescuing the Crown Prince."

That surprised a laugh out of Dom. "Meathead was right," he said, leaning away to do a backstroke towards where their clothes lay. "You aren't a bit romantic."

"What is it with your family and romance?" Kel demanded. "We've got a job to do."

Dom shook his head and stood up from the warm spring pool in a glorious wave of water. Kel's throat constricted a little more, watching the water run down Dom's chiseled shoulderblades and along his legs. _It's not fair_, she thought, watching him reach for a towel and then, his clothes. _It's not fair he's so good-looking, so smart, so _nice_._

When Dom, fully-dressed, turned around, Kel glared at him from the pool, holding her dagger aloft. "Back to camp," she threatened.

Dom laughed again, and disappeared into the trees. Kel waited for his footsteps to fade away, before hauling herself from the pool.

Jump lifted his head lazily from the tree he'd been sleeping under. He hadn't even stirred when Dom had come into the clearing, Kel realized.

"You're useless," she told the dog, who put his head back on the ground and thumped the ground with his tail as if to say _yeah, whatever_.

Kel shook her head as she put her clothes back on and headed to camp.

# # #

Blue pre-dawn light touched the horizon, marking the start of the fourth day the Tortallan forces had been camped in Scanra. The morning watch on the ramparts of Bergsterräng was patrolling solidly back and forth, the guards nodding a curt greeting to each other as they replaced the night watch.

Nobody noticed the sparrows that lit on the ramparts as the morning watch disappeared back in two neat rows towards Bergsterräng castle. The new watch members took up their positions, continuing to ignore the small brown birds as they chirruped with the beginning of the day.

Just before the sun could turn the sky pale yellow, a volley of silent brightly-fletched arrows shot through the air with deadly accuracy. Most shots took the guards in the collarbone and neck, sensitive places that were unprotected by mail or armor. The few that escaped the first volley were quickly shot down by a second.

The new guards standing by the portcullis were either felled by swordpoint or a third round of arrows. As Dom drew his sword back through the lattice portcullis, Kitten stepped forward and croaked, causing the portcullis to glitter with blue light before something clinked in the mechanisms causing it to rise.

Dom shook his head. _Dragons_, he thought. He was of the opinion that the immortals had forgotten more about magic and knowledge than humans would ever get around to knowing. He waved his group forward with a hand signal, nodding to Kitten and the large black cat that was prowling next to the dragon.

"You know where you're going," Dom told the immortal and the cat. "Gods all bless."

Kitten chirped and dropped to all fours, sprinting off towards the castle with the cat in hot pursuit. Dom wasn't sure how the dragon was going to get into the castle without anybody knowing, but was confident enough in the dragon's abilities, as well as Daine's knowledge of what the dragon could and could not accomplish.

When Dom's group entered the walls of the city, everything was still eerily quiet. Since farming was not part of Bergsterräng's economy, it seemed that the city was still asleep, which was well enough, as far as Dom was concerned. He wasn't sure if the inhabitants of the village where wholly loyal to Maggur or not, but if he could get out of this without a village-wide slaughter on his hands, all the better.

As his group proceeded towards the castle, Dom took a breath and surveyed the damage. Kel's group of archers had done well; the ramparts of both the city and the castle sported nothing but dead watch members.

Of course, there were likely a coven of soldiers on the _inside_ of the castle gates, and there was precious little time before somebody would realize that the watch was dead. The job of his group was to perform the first siege on the castle, with Kel's group doing a second sweep when Dom took care of the majority of the soldiers.

Owen rode his horse up next to Dom, with Tobe on the back. Normally Tobe stuck to his mistress like a burr to a saddle blanket, but since Dom's party had all the warhorses, Tobe had been convinced to go ahead with the first group. Nobody else could make Peachblossom cooperate with somebody who wasn't Kel.

"Orders?" Owen asked quietly.

"Same as we discussed before," Dom replied. Kitten and Daine were to make a quick stop at the front of the castle, so that Kitten could open any locked doors so that Dom's party could make a noisy front entrance. He wasn't sure how many mages Maggur held at his service, but he hoped that the number was small. They would run into problems, otherwise.

"Gods all bless," Dom repeated again, raising his hand for the charge.

# # #

When the sparrow lit on the ground of the slaves' cell, the inhabitants were already awake, expecting the arrival of a young woman in the form of a bird. When Daine flowed back into human form, the dark-haired woman held forward a spare cloak – fur.

Daine couldn't stop herself from making a face, which caused the dark-haired woman to smile wanly. "Fur is the style here for the rich," she explained. "Lady Sigrid doesn't have anything else."

Now Daine smiled. "It was kind of you to bring me anything at all," she told the woman before turning to the small slit window she had flown into. "Kitten?"

Several of the slaves couldn't suppress a gasp when Kitten poked her white head in through the window and trilled, causing all the manacles binding the slaves to break apart. Murmuring in wonder, several of the group stood up to cautiously approach the immortal, who studied them all with sober blue eyes.

"Are there usually guards?" Daine asked, turning to the door.

"Some," said the blind older man, who stood supported by a pair of younger men. "No more than two or three – I can hear them walking back and forth, even now."

Daine nodded. "Kitten will open the door, and then I'll… have to take care of the guards," she told them all. "You'll need to trust me – I have help coming in by the front way of the castle, who'll be distracting the castle troops. _You_ must show me where our prisoners are being held captive – a second wave of help will be on its way soon, so that we can free them."

"Lady." A young boy who couldn't have been any older than Tobe, stepped forward. "We've got some old folk with us, who can't fight. What about them?"

Daine's lips twisted. "We can leave them in the cell for now," she suggested. "I don't like it, but we could get Kit to lock the door so that nobody could enter, even if they had keys. They'll be safe, and… if we make it, we can come back and get them."

The blind man nodded. "It's a good plan. We older folk don't want to get in the way of your… adventuring." He smiled, and turned to the younger men supporting him. "You heard the woman – put me down!"

Daine turned back towards the door as Kitten trilled the voice pattern to unlock the door, and dropped the robe. Her body widened and strengthened as she took on bear form – she knew that the guards inside the castle wouldn't be armed with bows, so it would be nearly impossible for them to defeat her in this form.

The door swung open, and Daine dropped to all fours and galloped out into the hallway.


	7. Chapter 7

Author's note: Another looooong one. Couple of ones. But hey, it's done. Thanks for reading, and I hope everyone enjoyed reading as much as I did writing!

# # #

When Kel's rescue group walked into the castle, it was eerily quiet.

The doors had been pushed open with such force that the stone walls had cracked with the blow. About a dozen dead guards littered the foyer; likely a casualty of surprise, Kel thought. Dom had been lucky: he'd apparently been able to get into the castle before anybody inside had realized the watch was dead. Some of the bodies still had their swords sheathed.

Personally Kel thought it was extremely shoddy on the Scanran's part: in Tortall, surely there would have been some magical device to let the castle's defenders know what was going on inside.

_You'd think_, she thought wryly, stepping over a body that had both been pierced with colorfully-fletched griffin arrows and stomped on by a warhorse, _but maybe I should make inquiries in Corus, just in case_.

The sounds of battle drifted distantly towards the back of the castle, and Kel hand-signaled to her men – it was a much smaller group than Dom's, just ten in number – to keep quiet and calm. Being a smaller party, it wouldn't do to run afoul of a Scanran scout group or lookout.

Sparrows zipped above Kel's head and split neatly into two groups: the entrance to the castle opened directly into a wide hallway perpendicular off the foyer, equally as long in both directions before turning sharply out of sight. Half the flock went in one direction, while the other did the opposite, to scout for ambushes or traps. For more than the first time, Kel thanked the entire pantheon of gods for their assistance.

"Praise the birds," Kel heard one of her men whisper behind her. She smiled, but re-signaled for quiet.

The birds flew back down the hallway and trilled the all-clear pattern, and Kel's group neatly fanned out into the wide corridor.

"Orders?" Qasim asked, as sparrows landed in his hair and on his shoulders.

Kel bit her lip in thought: they couldn't afford to dawdle in the hallway that long, but without direction from either Daine, Dom's group, or the slaves, she was at a loss as to where to start searching.

Two more birds returned from the left side of the hallway, spinning in the "friend" circle. Kel grinned. "We wait," she told her men. "Hopefully, somebody will have inform-"

Her sentence was cut off by several sharp gasps as a white dragon and a large black panther loped around the corner at them with a pair of poorly-dressed young men following them.

The dragon skidded to a stop, her long claws tearing a neat gouge in the thick rug. The panther leapt and transformed into Daine, who landed less than a foot away from Kel.

"Sorry," Daine said, stepping back. She was winded, breathing hard and even. "It's hard to judge distances when I'm changing."

Several of Kel's men were averting their eyes politely – Daine had lost her clothes during the transformation.

"That's fine," Kel said, keeping her face Yamani-blank and turning to the two youths. "And you are?"

The boy on the left bowed quickly; he was snaggletoothed with dirty blond hair that fell into his eyes. "Carr, Lady. This-" he pointed to the shorter, stockier brunet beside him, "-be Norvin."

Norvin dipped a second bow, breathing as hard as Daine. "We was coming to show the godborn where your men'r being held."

"Only three of 'em," Carr added, tossing his hair out of his eyes with a flick of his head. Kel caught a glimpse of cloudy gray eyes before his hair fell back exactly where it was before. "Your other men'r still on the boat and, uh, 'is Majesty Roald is with Maggur, likeabouts."

"They're castle slaves," Daine added, before allowing her form to fall back down into panther-shape.

Kitten chirped impatiently, and the two boys trotted in front of the immortal just as if they'd been dealing with dragons and shapeshifters their entire lives. Daine and Kitten followed, with Kel. When their commander started moving Kel's men shed their paralysis caused by seeing both a dragon and a nude young woman changing into a panther and back and they followed.

"Don't see that every day," Qasim remarked, his cheeks slightly pink.

Kel couldn't repress a tiny quiver in her lips as she jogged up a narrow flight of stairs after the boys. If Qasim noticed, he pretended he was too intent on jogging to say so.

While the castle architecture looked simple from the outside – the tall outer walls surrounded the castle in a cube, making it look more like a fortress than a castle – the inside was bigger than it seemed, and also much like a rabbit's warren. Without the slaves to guide them, Kel realized, they could have been at the search for hours.

After about ten minutes of stairs, turns, and passageways concealed by pictures of tapestries, Norvin and Carr stopped them in front of a door. "This is one of 'em," Carr said, leaning on the wall to catch his breath.

Daine the panther rumbled slightly, and Kitten stood in front of the door and croaked. Nothing happened, not even a slight glow. Perplexed, Kitten tried a more complicated series of noises, but still, nothing. The dragon was starting to glow bright pink with irritation when one of Kel's men cleared his throat.

"Maybe there's no metal," he said. "Can she open doors that don't have metal latches?"

Kel frowned. "It would make sense, I suppose. If you were going to imprison a mage… metal locks would be too easy to open. Lots of Gifted _children_ can undo locks."

The panther rumbled once more and then slowly shifted, changing into a gray, leathery-skinned animal with a long pike on its head – a rhinoceros, Kel realized, staring in wonder. She wasn't the only one. Rhinoceroses were native only to the southern areas of Carthak, and nobody had ever seen one in person before.

The rhinoceros backed up as far as it could get to the opposite wall before charging forward against the door. Made of thick wood, the door shattered inwards on impact causing the room's occupant to jump out of his bed in surprise as a hail of splinters rained down on him.

Kitten skittered under Daine's legs and Kel entered glaive-first to see a middle-aged man in a gray tunic staring at the rhinoceros with as much wonder as Kel and her men had.

"Are you well?" Kel asked, not recognizing the man, who looked up at her with a slightly bemused expression.

"Ah, and you must be the Lady Knight," he said, appraising her and standing. "Wonderful. I was wondering what all the ruckus out there was for." He grinned. "Thanks for not forgetting about us normal folk."

Kel nodded. "And you might be?"

"Greler, Lady. Greler Strongstone," the man said, stepping forward. "I'm one of the army's mages. Might we get out of this blasted cell? I've had enough of staring at it."

"Of course," Kel said, backing out of the small room to allow the man to exit. As soon as Greler was out of the room's confines, the man smiled again, this time more wolfishly.

"I think I might be able to open the next door," he told her, holding up hands that crackled with amber fire. "There was a suppressant in the cell, Lady – but I got it back, now."

A small part of Kel breathed with relief – at least they'd have three mages on their side after they let the other two out. The obvious question was why Greler and the other two mages had been separated from the rest, but idle curiosity could wait, she supposed. If it were important, it would come up.

Greler had pressed his hands against the second door that Carr and Norvin pointed out, an intense expression on his face and amber glinting between his fingers. "I can get it out," he announced, "but I'll need help bringing it down. It's solid oak."

Kel waved some men over, and her other soldiers fanned out in a half-circle around the open door, just in case. Kitten made a growling noise in her throat, and Kel heard rather than saw Daine shift back into panther shape. Kel didn't doubt that the next cell held a friendly mage, but there was never any harm in being a little overzealous.

When Greler and Kel's men brought the second door down, a tall, pale man with blue eyes and curly blond hair that nearly stuck straight out from his head stood just beyond it, like he had his ear pressed up against the door to listen.

He grinned like Greler had after stepping out of the cell and bright yellow sparks blazed around his fingers like uncontrolled lightning. "Praise Mithros," he said. "I've never been so glad to see anybody in my life, Lady Knight."

Kel clasped hands with him and nodded, ignoring the painless yellow bolts that danced over their grasp. "After we get the last mage out, we'll go hunt for Roald and Maggur," she promised him. Both Greler and the second mage now sported identical wolf smiles; even though neither of the men were knights, Kel knew they were warriors and being able to hunt the one that imprisoned them would hold appeal.

Norvin trotted up and tugged on Kel's shoulder. "Lady," he whispered, dark eyes wide, "the room that holds the last mage is already open, and there're people walking around in it."

Kel hummed softly in her throat. "Thanks," she whispered back, hand-signaling to her men to fall back in line. Though Greler and the other mage didn't know the signals specific to the Own, they assembled into formation quickly, at the rear of the group to provide coverage and strike forward if appropriate. Kel had never worked closely with battle-trained mages before other than Neal, who was mostly a healer, and found that she could get used to it.

The door that Norvin pointed out was, indeed, open a crack. Kel signaled for her men to fan out around the door in a protective half-circle, with Daine and Kitten squatting on their haunches just beyond the men, ready to strike. Her two mages had their hands out in front of them, the first lines of battle-offensive incantations on their lips.

Quickly, Kel slammed forward into the door, causing it to slap back against the far wall and she used her momentum to bring her glaive slicing upwards along the door's opening at shoulder height.

She surprised a man wearing a Scanran guard uniform who was sitting on a stool right in front of the cell's bed; her glaive caught him in the back of the head. Fortunately for the man, he was sitting far enough forward that only the glaive's sharp point grazed the back of his skull, but before he could turn around Kel had swung back the other way with the pole-end of the weapon, knocking him upside the head and causing him to fall sideways from the stool. Something he had held in his right hand ricocheted off the far wall.

Kel couldn't help but make a slight face – she wasn't sure if she had killed the man, but the shallow cut on his scalp was bleeding heavily and causing a puddle on the floor. When she looked up to the bed she saw Neal laying on it, green eyes wide in his head and a long black thread hanging from his nose.

Neal opened his mouth when they made eye contact, and then gagged on something. Kel stepped forward to help and noticed that his wrists were bleeding slightly from a recent struggle against the manacles that held him supine on the bed.

A hand on her shoulder nearly made her throw her elbow into the person's face, when she realized the hand belonged to Qasim. "Lady, best let me. If you do it wrong, you can damage his innards."

Kel stepped aside to let him pass, puzzled, before the black tube hanging out of Neal's nose registered. It wasn't an uncommon practice with uncooperative prisoners who needed to be kept alive: if incarcerated persons refused to eat, often jailers would thread a thin tube down the nose to the stomach, and force-feed them through it.

As Qasim gently pushed Neal's head back onto his pillow, Kel looked to the wall and saw the item the guard had been holding when Kel had attacked: a small funnel. On the bed was a half-empty flask of broth.

_Figures that, out of three people, Neal's the one that ended up tied to the bed and force-fed_, Kel thought, waiting patiently as Qasim slowly coaxed the tube out of Neal's nose. When he had succeeded, Neal leaned weakly over the side of the bed and vomited.

Qasim helped him lay back on the bed. "What tidings do you bring us, Sir Nealan?" he asked with quiet humor.

Neal breathed deeply, sweat plastering his dark bangs to his face. He shifted under the blanket on top of him uncomfortably. "Not good ones," he croaked, his throat obviously sore from the tube.

Kel stepped forward once more, and felt a panther slink in behind her. "You're all right?" she asked, her throat going tight with relief at seeing Neal alive. She hadn't let herself believe otherwise, but otherwise was always an option. Her Yamani-training kept her steady and on-task when the sight of him breathing might have withered her into a relieved puddle.

Neal's eyes snapped over to her face, and he sighed. "Not broken," he told her, though something about that wasn't as assured as Kel would have liked. He tugged at the manacles around his wrists, causing a couple more drops of blood to escape from under them. "You shouldn't use Gift on these," he said, eyes turning back up to the ceiling, as if unable to keep eye contact with anyone for long. "They absorb magic."

Kel's lips tucked to the side, wondering what was wrong with him – he looked relatively unharmed, but that didn't mean much. She would have to ask him later, provided there was a later. "We've got some battle axes, we could-"

A sharp, piercing whistle cut her off, and the manacles obediently snapped open. Kel looked down at Kitten, who was still clearly annoyed at her inability to open the doors. A wisp of smoke curled up from her nose as she muttered under her breath about something and glared at the fallen manacles.

Now Kel smiled, looking down at the dragon. "I keep on forgetting about you," she told the dragonet.

Neal wasn't able to sit up by himself, which made Kel wonder how long he'd been chained to the bed. Qasim helped him sit up, and rearranged the stained white blanket around his lap to preserve Neal's modesty.

"That's illegal," Kel said, her fingers tightening on her glaive in anger. Under current treaties, all noble prisoners were allowed certain privileges as prisoners of war; adequate food, clothing, shelter, and time for exercise. While Kel disliked the precepts on the stance that it meant that commoner prisoners could be treated however their captors felt was necessary, it annoyed her that the customs clearly had not been kept in Neal's case, if he had been chained naked to a bed so long that he couldn't sit up by his own power.

Neal smiled wryly as Qasim massaged his shoulders, trying to get the blood to flow through the muscles again, and he winced. "On his own lands, a noble is untouchable," he quoted. The smile turned bitter when he added, "A noble not on his own lands appears to be _very_ touchable."

Something about his tone made Kel's hair want to stand up on end. Qasim frowned down at Neal, who had resumed staring at the floor, and said, "Lady Knight, you can go on ahead. A couple of men can stay with Sir Nealan, here, until he can walk. We can go outside and wait for you to come out."

Kel nodded. "Good plan. Nari?" She looked up and the named sparrow came forward with a peep. "Have a couple of your sparrows stay with them. If something happens… have them come find us."

Nari peeped and two sparrows separated from the rest of the flock to land on Neal's bed and pull at some of the loose threads on the blanket covering Neal's lap. Neal's eyes followed the birds, but he didn't move. Watching him only made Kel angrier, for reasons that she couldn't guess, so she turned to leave.

"Kel," Neal said suddenly, causing Kel to turn around in the doorframe. Neal was looking up again, something dull and hard in his gaze. "…be careful."

Kel nodded once, again bewildered by the strange way Neal was acting, but then shook it off with a deep breath. Distractions would only get them all killed. Qasim was competent: Neal was alive and would be fine. She picked another man from her group to stay behind with Qasim and Neal, and then trotted out of the cell.

She almost ran slapbang into Greler and the other mage. "Is he all right?" the blond mage asked, trotting next to her.

"Well enough," Kel said, Yamani-face on in full form. "He'd been chained to a bed and was being force-fed, but he looks unharmed."

Greler and the blond mage exchanged looks, and Kel frowned, about to ask them what had happened, when Carr called her from the front. "Lady, this way for where King Maggur is!"

Kel sighed and lengthened her stride to take her place at the front of the small rescue squad. Another hand-signal caused her men to fall behind her in arrow-formation, with the mages again at the back with Kitten and Daine. Carr ran just in front of her, with Norvin at the back with the mages.

Jump had been trotting at her heels, but then suddenly slowed with a warning howl. Kel didn't realize until it was too late; she didn't realize anything until she heard Greler cry out, "Illusion!"

The sound stopped Kel in her tracks and she turned around to see the rest of her rescue party running at full kilter almost a league behind her. She saw Greler and the other mage glowing with their Gifts but they were too far away, and Kel was too shocked by the sudden change to do anything about it.

In her pause she didn't see the door open behind her: a Scanran guard leapt out beside her and ran his broadswoard through Carr's chest: Carr gasped wetly, surprised by the thrust, and then dropped like a stone. The guard braced his foot against Carr's chest to pull out the blade.

Snapping back to her senses Kel was able to whip her glaive around to slice through the guard's sword arm. The guard yelled in pain and Kel was about to turn the blade back the other way to finish him off before a thick hand gripped her by the back of her tunic and yanked her off balance into a room, and the door closed behind her.

# # #

Roald thought he was going to go insane.

It was clear what was going on outside the throne room; men were fighting and dying. The screams and grunts had been echoing around the hallways for hours now, but instead of doing anything proactive like ordering soldiers around or even making plans for escape, Maggur had done nothing but cut slices of white cheese from a block with a small knife with a gold-wrought hilt. He had been at it for about an hour now, whittling slice after slice of cheese off the block and stacking it between thick slices of bread.

Having kept Maggur constant company for the past week, Roald still wasn't sure if the warlord-cum-monarch was actually crazy or not. He acted remarkably sane most of the time, engaging Roald in casual conversation about fine literature or art, but then sometimes he would do things like eat cheese when his castle was under siege.

Roald couldn't understand it, and it was all he could do to sit there calmly while battle raged around the castle. His fingers were so tight on the armrests of his chair that they had gone bloodless a long while ago, and sweat marched down his back so much that the velvet of his tunic itched unpleasantly.

Maggur kept on offering him cheese, which Roald constantly turned down. It was hard enough trying to sit still with a fight going on around him; eating was simply beyond his abilities.

"You really should reconsider," Maggur had told him for the thousandth time. "It's quite excellent, particularly if you're partial to goat cheese, which I am. Oh, look."

Roald's head snapped up to see Keladry of Mindelan stumble into the room, having been shoved in quite roughly by a large guard. Roald couldn't stop his jaw from dropping.

Keladry recovered quickly, her glaive whipping forward and around in a deft figure eight pattern. When a short glance around the room seemed to prove to her that all the guards were merely standing at attention, she lowered her weapon slowly. Her eyes lingered over Roald for a while, before turning to Maggur.

"Hm," Maggur said, dabbing at his lips with a napkin before standing up. "You must be the Protector of the Small."

Roald saw Keladry's face harden at the moniker, but she said nothing.

Maggur raised an eyebrow, appraisingly. "You're considerably less talkative than your friend Sir Nealan," he told her.

Keladry still didn't react. Roald forced himself to loosen his fingers from the armrest and flex them. Instinctively he tried to call for his Gift, to find it still suppressed. He sighed, and tried to work blood back into his fingers anyway.

"Though he became a lot less talkative too," Maggur went on, stepping in front of Roald. "Has he told you what he's done for Scanra? I'm sure you've seen him by now; he's been a bit of a problem, to be sure, but his Gift was too strong. We needed him to help… spawn the next generation of Scanran mages."

Roald watched as Keladry's face went from slightly confused to stark understanding. To most people the Lump's facial expressions all looked the same, but Roald had spent a lot of time with Keladry during their page years, enough to be familiar with the slight changes in Keladry's face and what they meant. Roald also always had a natural knack for reading people, even so-called Lumps.

_He's just trying to bait you,_ Roald thought desperately, wishing he were telepathic. _Don't rise for it-_

But it was too late. Keladry took a step forward, fury blazing in soft hazel eyes, a look totally alien on her features so much that Roald was shocked for a minute and Keladry opened her mouth to call Maggur a bastard and she stepped forward-

A guard from behind took advantage of her distraction and slammed his spear solidly into her back, and the look of anger changed quickly to pain and surprise as her glaive fell from her hands and hit the flagstones with an echo that was louder than Keladry's knees hitting the floor.

Maggur's smile had turned upwards as he watched Keladry slump forward into a puddle of her own blood and one of the guards shouted and pointed behind him, which was just enough time for Maggur to turn around as Roald had flown from his chair and picked up the cheese knife and stabbed it deep into Maggur's heart, all the way up to the gold hilt.

In a split second the guards had raised their spears and were charging as Maggur gasped in shock and fell to his knees, blood rushing down his chest as he grasped desperately at the buried cheese knife. It was far too late, however, even if he was able to pull it out. Few healers could save a person from a direct stab to the heart, and none of those who could were in Scanra, as far as Roald was aware.

At the instant Maggur had hit the floor Roald felt the dampers on his Gift roll back and Roald screamed a word. Blue fire shot from his hands in all directions like the sun's rays, each hitting a guard and causing them all to fall forward, unconscious.

Gasping at the sudden onslaught and diffusion of power and the rush of adrenaline Roald nearly tripped over the prone warlord. "My Gift is just as strong as my father's," he snarled to the dying man, before stumbling over to where Keladry lay.

His Gift wasn't truly meant for healing, but Roald had studied a little bit. From what he had studied, Keladry did not look good. The spear was buried at least four inches deep at an angle, which meant that her lung had been punctured. Lung-punctures were hard to heal, even for Duke Baird.

But Roald knew he had to try. With a soft prayer to the Goddess, the deity of healers, he murmured the incantation for blood-stopping, and pressed his glowing hands over the wound.

# # #

Neal saw the sparrows zip into the room, peeping frantically, and surged to his feet.

And then promptly crumpled to the ground again. With a curse he tried to scrabble upwards, only to have Qasim and the other man who had volunteered to stay behind – Salm – grip his biceps and hold him up.

"We're needed," Qasim said grimly, maneuvering Neal back onto the bed. "You'll have to stay here."

Neal glared and stumbled to his feet again, this time using one hand to lean against the headboard for support and the other to hold the blanket around his waist. "I'm _not_ staying here," he said stubbornly, even though his knees were quaking under his weight. "If I have to _crawl_ I'm going."

"Sir, you're too weak," Salm began, and was cut off by another of Neal's pointed glares.

"Take me with you. That's an _order_," Neal growled, knowing that neither man, both commoners, could refuse it.

Qasim looked as if he were a mind to try to refuse for a moment, before the sparrows screeched again, wheeling over their heads. "We're wasting time," the Bazhir man said finally, turning his own glare to Neal. "Get on my back. It's the only way."

With some maneuvering Neal was able to straddle the man's back and they were both on their way down the hallway. Jump ran out from behind a corner, yipping, and running in front to show them the way.

Neal took a deep breath, and reached for his Gift. It was true he was too weak to fight physically, but he had enough power in him to put up a good fight against a few men, if necessary. He could at least knock them out.

Qasim and Salm ran after the dog, who took them down a couple of corridors before all three warriors and Jump were engulfed by chaos.

The room was awash with tens of Scanran soldiers, who were beating up against Kel's force as well as Dom's force, who had followed the pandemonium to the throne room at some point. Warhorses reared and kicked and dragged Scanran uniformed men down with their teeth so that their riders could run them through. Nevertheless the Tortallans were outnumbered, which was beginning to wear heavy on their ranks.

Qasim hurriedly put Neal down. "We need to help," he told Neal with a glare. "Try to stay alive. The Lady will have my head if you get yourself killed over foolishness."

Neal rolled his eyes as Salm and Qasim unsheathed their swords and threw themselves into the melee. Neal knew that trying to help bodily would be a good way to get himself killed, so he settled himself into a corner to see about helping in a roundabout way; there were definitely a surplus of Scanran soldiers that could use knocking out.

Flares of amber and yellow fire got his attention: Kellen and Greler had been released as well. Though their magic must have been weakened, Neal thought. If both mages had been at their full level, the battle wouldn't be as even as it was presently.

A weak flicker of blue caught his eye – when the battle shifted, Neal got a glimpse of the Crown Prince hunched over something that had been covered with a blue dome of shielding magic – shielding magic that was getting weaker by the second. Roald was knelt over a person and a spreading puddle of blood and it was –

The sparrows shrieked and swirled over his head before shooting over to the bubble, but Neal didn't need the hint. He dodged a Scanran with a battle axe and nearly fell over in the process, but he managed to throw himself against the dome, hitting against it with a fist and yelling at Roald to lower the shield.

A sword whizzed so close to the back of his head that Neal felt a few locks of hair being lopped off by the sharp blade, but it was intercepted by a bolt of amber light before the soldier could behead him.

Greler, his hair plastered to his face with sweat, gave him a brief nod before sliding in front of him, giving Neal protection as he tried to get Roald's attention. Neal yelled and beat against the shield again. Roald was a decent healer as far as they went, but the long spear sticking out of Kel's back required someone of more experience, as Neal was.

Finally Roald looked up, and his face washed over with relief as he recognized Neal. He mouthed a word and the shield disappeared for a second, just enough time for Neal to fall flat on his face and get a bloody nose.

"Sorry!" Roald yelped, looking as though he was going to bolt over and assist before he remembered Kel. The blue glow from his hands didn't falter.

"It's fine," Neal growled, struggling to his knees. He didn't have the energy to get to his feet to walk; with one hand holding the blanket around his waist, he crawled over to where Kel was, trying not to slip in her blood that covered the flagstone floor.

"I can't do it," Roald said, and Neal noticed that his face was pale and sweaty. "I don't… her lung's pierced, Neal, and I can't…"

"It's _fine_," Neal repeated crisply, though he knew that if he didn't even have the energy to walk, healing a lung-puncture would be difficult.

No time for doubts, though. Neal put his hands around the spear still sticking out of Kel's back and searched through the wound – Roald had done a good job with staunching the blood flow and keeping the lungs dry, but he had been unable to close the wounds.

With a deep breath Neal murmured an incantation and was able to sustain a tissue-knitting spell for five seconds before his power started flickering dangerously: between his imprisonment and his lack of food and mental stress, his Gift was painfully weak.

About to wail with despair, Neal silenced when he felt Roald against his back. "I can give you my power," he said. "You've got the training and the knack, Neal – I don't. I'll give you the Gift."

Neal took a deep breath – Gift transfer could be dangerous. "We have to," he said, just as much to himself as to Roald. Closing his eyes, he turned inward.

His inner self was a soft white glow – his life force – shot through with frighteningly pale green fire. He felt Roald shift behind him and then dark blue started pouring in, bright and strong, and Neal breathed slowly, trying not to let the new power overwhelm him. Almost unconsciously he went back to the tissue-knitting spell. When he opened his eyes his hands were glowing unfamiliar blue with faint green sparks buried in it.

Neal concentrated; slowly Kel's lung tissue was beginning to stitch together. But it wasn't just the lung-stitching: Neal also had to monitor her blood loss, replenish what was lost, keep the lungs dry, keep an eye on her heart, and keep burning everything out to prevent infection. It was long, hard work: Neal had only seen his father attempt to save somebody from a lung-puncture once, and it had taken three other well trained healer-mages to finish the job. Neal only had Roald and his own weakened power, and Roald wasn't trained fully as a healer: the power that he was giving Neal wasn't built for healing endurance. Taking a deep breath and imploring Kel to hold on, he kept at it. His head ached and his body was weak with hunger and stress, but his mind focused as well as it could. His hands trembled over Kel's wound.

He was so intent on his healing that he didn't notice the shield around them flickering: Roald was slumped against his back, half-comatose from supplying all the power Neal required and attempting to hold up the shield. Eventually Roald's Gift started to wane, and the shield died.

Now unprotected, a Scanran archer sighted on them as Neal looked up. When Neal saw he was staring down the wrong end of an archer's aim he closed his eyes; he was too weak and there was nothing he could do about it now.

The arrows thudded into something heavy in front of him that wasn't his own body. Neal opened his eyes to see Kellen screaming an incantation for a new shield that surrounded the healers in an electric shock of yellow and Dom falling to the floor with two arrows, one embedded in his thick neck muscle, the other in his chest.

With a moan of despair Neal reached forward with a blue-edged hand to Dom's chest – he would have to heal them both, but how was he going to do it?

Dom grabbed his wrist. "Idiot," he told Neal, breathing hard with sweat beading on his hairline. "You can't heal a lung puncture and a chest blow with a single healer. Haven't you…" he winced, the color draining from his face as his blood mixed with Kel's on the floor, "haven't you learned anything about… healing?"

"Dom…" Neal said, his head beginning to whirl. Roald groaned at his back; the power the Crown Prince was feeding him was beginning to flicker and fade, Kel was dying, Dom was dying, and Neal couldn't do anything about any of it.

Neal wanted to scream, but in his hazy state he thought he was back in the Chamber of the Ordeal and thus not allowed to make a sound. This could only possibly happen to him in the Chamber. There was no way the gods could allow this to be real. Not what had happened, not what was happening.

_The gods are supposed to be merciful_, Neal thought pathetically, feeling Dom's grasp on his wrist weaken, and then finally drop to the blood-soaked floor.

Dom smiled distantly, the blood starting to flow from his neck in earnest as if it sensed there was nothing that could stop it. "If you let her die," he said in a whisper, "I'll come back from the Black God's Realms to kill you myself." He took a last deep breath and sighed deeply into death, like settling into a bed for the night.

The lump in Neal's throat was too thick to speak over – he lost control of the healing spell for a moment and blue power flared uselessly over his hands as his breath broke into a sob.

Roald let out a last shuddering breath and slipped into unconsciousness; the Gift he was lending Neal disappeared like a snuffed candle.

And then, pain: the power that now blazed around his hands was pure white, the color of his own life essence. There was no more Gift. There was no more anything. He couldn't save Kel, he couldn't save Dom, and he was going to die uselessly in the attempt.

There was only one thing left, Neal realized, tears of exhaustion and sorrow pouring down his cheeks. His elbows bent and he collapsed over Kel, completely spent. Kel's wound started pouring blood again, soaking Neal's chest.

"Great Mother," he whispered, "open the gates and show me the way…"

First, blackness.

Then, something touched his shoulder and his vision exploded with color, color so intense and bright and shifting so rapidly it was like staring into the soul of Chaos. Neal couldn't decide if he wanted to vomit or pass out, and wobbled between the two for a perilous moment.

_Sit up, _the voice commanded, a voice with a million voices in it, mostly masculine but still somehow feminine, at its base. _Sit, Sir Knight_.

The color raging through him like a fire gave him strength: he sat up and came face to face with another being kneeling over Kel's body, a human-shape that contained every hue of every color imaginable, changing and writhing like the surface of the sun. Neal's breathing was ragged: he stared.

A pair of blue eyes gazed out at him from behind the color madness; Neal could see a crystal on a thong hanging down from the creature's neck. _You have the healing knowledge_, it said in that masculine-yet-not voice, a thousand screams together to make single words. It hurt Neal's head. _I will give you the power. Put your hands with mine_.

The creature's hands were resting over Kel's wound, preventing her from bleeding to death. In this strange view of colors Neal could see everyone in the room differently: the clash outside looked like gray outlines of men warring against each other: Greler and Kellen were gray shot through with amber and yellow respectively; Roald, still slumped over, was very dim blue, and two figures glowed intense copper, who had to be Daine and Tobe. Kitten sparkled with silver glitter as she croaked something and a fighter dropped his sword. There was a muted green and mauve-glow that must have belonged to Scanran mages; their magic pulsed with Greler and Kellen's in a bitter struggle.

Trembling, Neal obeyed and placed his hands over the creature's: his own body throbbed softly with green light, barely perceptible.

_Now do it_, the creature ordered.

Power shot through Neal of its own accord: he could feel Kel's muscle, sinew, and tissue knitting itself together through his hands, as though he was merely the conduit for the power and Kel's body knew what it needed to be well. Neal looked up at the creature again, wondering if it was the Mother Goddess. He had never heard of Her coming to anybody in the guise of a thousand-colored specter, but She could do whatever She wanted, of course-

Through the creature's hands Neal could detect a heartbeat, one that wasn't Neal or Kel's, so it had to be the creature's. Surprised, Neal pushed a little farther: not only one, but _two_ heartbeats. Actually, Neal could sense that the second "heartbeat" was merely a biological promise of a heartbeat to come – the baby wasn't old enough yet to have one.

_You're… pregnant!_ Neal realized, shocked. Since when was the Mother Goddess-

Those blue eyes continued to stare at him, clearly amused. _With our child_, the thousand voices said at once.

Neal barely felt Kel's skin close below his hands, he was so surprised. _Sigrid?_

Sigrid's body slowly dimmed, the thousands of colors swirling inside of her skin stilled and washed away. When everything had finished dimming down, Sigrid was kneeling across Kel's body from Neal, wearing the red fur overrobe. Though they were done healing Kel, Sigrid hadn't moved her hands.

"I had the power," she said, removing the crystal from her neck. At some point the battle had stopped – only Tortallans stood in the room now, with the rest of the Scanrans either dead or having fled. "The Gate of Idramm," she explained. "All the power from your mages… was mine."

"You're pregnant," Neal whispered, his overexerted body beginning to collapse to the floor. He kept himself upright by planting his arms against the floor, though his elbows trembled violently with the weight.

Sigrid looked down at him and nodded once.

"Sir Nealan?" Qasim stood behind him, and touched his shoulder, one cautious eye on Sigrid. "Are you all right?"

Neal didn't answer, his eyes still on Sigrid. Sigrid smiled wanly. "Sleep, Sir Nealan," she told him. "You're tired."

Up until that point, Neal realized, Sigrid wouldn't have known what his name was. She had never asked, and Neal had never told her.

Sigrid stood, and the rest of Kel's rescue squad held their positions and shifted uncertainly, not knowing if this strange woman was a threat or not. She turned her beautiful blonde head towards Maggur's dead body and shook her head. "There is nothing left for me now." For a moment, her hand unconsciously touched her lower stomach, causing Neal's breath to accelerate. _My child_.

Abruptly, Sigrid twirled the crystal and it shattered against the ground. Neal was blinded by green light before finally slipping into darkness.

# # #

Kel stared at the dark wall of her cabin. She bobbed up and down with the rhythm of the Kraken's Supper on its way home.

She had been unconscious in the aftermath of the battle, having barely escaped death and undergone what Qasim had told her was "no less than a miracle" by the hands of Neal and the blonde Scanran woman who had glowed with a thousand colors.

She sighed. The first mate on the Kraken's Supper had insisted on giving her his quarters, the entire crew agreeing that it was the only decent thing to do with an injured woman on board. Most of Kel's men were on the Kraken's Supper – the slaves they had rescued and the retrieved mages were piloting the ship that the Scanrans had used to kidnap the mages. Kel was, once again, the only female onboard the ship.

"We know ye can take care of yeself," Captain Keystone had told her when she regained consciousness and was outraged at the special treatment, "but who knows what young buck might try to do to ye when ye're not awake enough to wield ye're blade?"

No amount of trying to convince him that every man she had fought with had known her for nearly five years would get anybody to change their minds. Even her own men had rolled their eyes at her protests. So Kel had spent most of the journey alone in a very narrow, rocking room with only one round window for company. It faced west, holding a constant vista of sea and sky, giving Kel no distraction from her thoughts.

And distraction wouldn't have been unwelcome. She had been plagued with visions of her own stupidity; allowing herself to be distracted by words and stabbed in the back was bad enough. Her Yamani trainers would have turned away from her in disgust. No amount of men telling her that being stabbed in the back with no warning was a dirty trick would console her on that point. She would have almost preferred Yamani disdain for her weakness.

Kel shifted uncomfortably on her front. She didn't usually sleep on her stomach, but laying on her tender back wasn't an option.

After her stabbing, she remembered only shock, no pain, as she fell forward from the blow and passed into blackness.

When the darkness had enveloped her, she found herself standing at the bottom of a large, dark well composed of endless shifting faces, passing in and out of view over and over again. Screams and soft moans echoed around, but Kel wasn't afraid. This was death. She had been courting it for a while, choosing the path of a knight and then opting to go on multiple secret rescue missions. Privately, Kel thought that she had been asking for it. She was only sorry at the heartache it would cause her family and friends left behind. She was sorry if her death would cut short the dreams of other females who wanted to be knights: surely, when parents had heard of her grisly death in a Scanran castle, they would forbid their daughters from taking on such a dangerous path.

_But the path was mine_, Kel thought at the bottom of that endless, writhing well_, I chose it_.

It was something to be proud of. Her life was short, but she had accomplished much. She squared her shoulders and awaited the Black God.

A hand touched her back. She turned around, expecting the God of Death and gasped: it was Dom, faded from colors into fuzzed shades of gray, but a smile still on his features. Was that what she looked like? Bled from color and life and nothing left but pale grays?

_Assuming that we had a theoretical future_, the Dom-shade said to her, the same attractive smile on his face that Kel always remembered him with, _I would have been proud to be your theoretical husband_.

_You're dead?_ Kel asked him, horrified, forgetting that she herself was in the same predicament.

The Dom-shade had nodded, taking her hands in his. Surprisingly, when Kel looked down, her hands were the same dark tan they had been in life. _But it was worth it_, he told her.

_I'm dead too!_ she replied, confused when he shook his head.

_Look_. Dom-shade pointed upwards, towards the top of the well, and Kel could see a raging fire of green and blue forcing its way down into the depths. _That's Meathead and our Prince. They're coming to bring you back_.

Kel looked down and shook her head. _I got stabbed in the back_, she told him. _There's no possible way-_

Dom-shade was frowning. _They'd better. I didn't take two arrows protecting them just so they could cock up your healing_.

_You did what?_ Kel asked, outraged. The blue and green blaze was getting closer, but paler at the same time. She shook her head at the foolishness – if Neal and Roald got themselves killed trying to heal her impossible injury, she would have words for them when they all got to the Realms of the Dead. The words would not be "blessings."

Dom-shade leaned forward and kissed her cheek. _It's time. Take care of Meathead for me. Mithros knows he needs it_.

He was fading, the blue and green fire was approaching, and Kel was angry at all of them _all_ of them because she wasn't this gods-curst important – why couldn't they have just let her die?

Dom-shade, as if reading her thoughts, smiled as he disappeared. _Consider this_, he said as he faded into nothing, into that dark writhing well, _theoretically, maybe we all love you_.

Kel opened her mouth, horrified that he was disappearing, when the blue and green suddenly exploded into a kaleidoscope of colors, twisting and shooting deep into the bottom of the well to strike at her like lightening.

And then there was swift ascension into the light, and then nothing.

Now she was laying face-down on a hard, narrow bunk in the depths of an old fishing ship that smelled like wood-rot and rotten fish flesh, and tears leaked out of her eyes, staining her pillowcase. As bad as dying was, she wasn't sure how much happier she was to be alive.

She had been wallowing in such fashion for a couple of days when her room door creaked open. She turned her head, thinking it was Qasim, who had come to visit her daily with light meals and attempted conversation, and was surprised to see Neal.

Dressed in a thin white shift he leaned against the doorway, clearly still too exhausted to stand up under his own power for very long. His skin was nearly as washed-out as the shift he was wearing; his green eyes and dark hair set up for a sharp contrast against all the paleness. His lips set in a thin line, and he twisted his long fingers together over and over, nervous.

Kel wasn't up for idle banter. "Yes?" she asked, her voice half-muffled from the pillow.

"…can I come in?" Neal asked, uncharacteristically awkward.

Kel's eyes fluttered closed. It would be childish to send him away. He had saved her life, the costs of which notwithstanding. Shifting, she rolled carefully onto her side, settling down gingerly into a position that didn't pain her too badly. "Sit," she ordered. The only piece of furniture in the room was the bed, and Neal looked likely to pass out if he stood for too long.

Neal smiled slightly. "Good," he said, carefully picking his way across the rocking floor. "I don't know if I would have been able to walk back to my quarters, and Qasim would have fits if I fell asleep in the hall in front of your door." Carefully, he braced himself against the side of her bed and climbed on.

And then he promptly took a little more liberty than Kel had meant to give him by lying down next to her and wrapping her in a tight embrace. Kel's body jumped slightly in surprise at having his body pressed against hers in such a tight space; he was trembling, and the breath she could feel against her collarbone was shaking, in stark contrast to the flippancy in his comment.

Halted by indecision, Kel let her hand rest against his side, not quite sure if she should return the embrace in full. "Neal?" she asked, voice a little softer this time.

She heard a wet noise, and hot breath expelled hard against her shoulder before he answered, "You're _alive_."

Kel sighed deeply: somewhere in the back of her head, she heard Dom-shade saying, _theoretically, maybe we love you_. It still hurt, but for the moment she let herself concentrate on Neal. "So are you," she told him, her hand sliding down to rub a soothing line on his back. "Thank Mithros."

"I'm so, so sorry about Dom," he said into her shoulder. "I really am."

Kel stiffened. "What about him?"

That brought Neal's face up: his eyes were puffy, but the way he rolled them was Neal at his most ornery. "Come _on_, Kel. If it wasn't obvious as the nose on your face before, the fact that Dom said that he would kill me from the grave if I let you die was a dead giveaway."

Kel sighed and gave in. "He theoretically proposed to me."

Neal raised an eyebrow. "Theoretically?"

Now, Kel couldn't help but smile at the thought. "I know."

Shaking his head, Neal resituated himself against her shoulder. It felt strange, being entwined: had this happened about seven years earlier, Kel probably would have fainted from giddiness at getting to touch Neal like this. Now it just felt safe, platonic and solid. It was good to have him alive and _there_, and the touch just reaffirmed it. She gave in and let her arm wrap around his back completely. She closed her eyes into the touch.

"I know a couple of Yamanis who are going to be thrilled when this ship docks," she teased gently. Roald was bunking in another area of the ship, Qasim had said, most likely in Keystone's quarters.

She expected something pert out of Neal, but instead he frowned, and bit his lower lip. Kel flashed back to what Maggur had told her to make her drop her guard, and looked down.

Kel nudged him with her shoulder. Neal looked up again, eyes serious. "I'll tell you what happened when we were captive," he said, not breaking eye contact, "but you have to swear to me, on your honor as a knight, on the heads of your unborn children, on your ancestors graves, on whatever Yamanis swear on, that you won't say anything to anybody else about it."

Kel blinked. "Okay."

Neal sighed, and looked back down at her shoulder. "Maggur took the mages that had the strongest Gifts from the boat and wanted to use us to… impregnate Scanran women who also had Gift to create a generation of Gifted Scanrans."

Kel was silent for a moment. "Hence being tied down to the bed, then."

That brought a slight chuckle from Neal, though he still wouldn't look up. "That was actually because I kept on trying to use my Gift and apparently the dampers on the room weren't enough to stop me, but yes."

Reaching up uncertainly, Kel smoothed back a lock of Neal's hair from his face. It promptly flipped back into his eyes. She wasn't good at this sort of thing: she had known women before who had been coerced against their will, but she hadn't known what to do with them, either. "Don't be ashamed," she said softly. "You didn't have a choice. And when I saw you, you were chained to a bed and being fed through your nose, so it's obvious whatever was going on you didn't want."

Neal was quiet for a few moments, and then looked up, eyes surprisingly angry. "You believe that? Kel, I got a woman pregnant. If people find out, they're going to think that I _wanted_ to do it, and that's best-case scenario, even if it _is_ a form of treason. If word gets out that I was… used and couldn't stop it, you think it'll be nothing to be ashamed of? It'll bring more shame to my family than if I had been stabbed in the back while running away from an enemy with all the King's men watching me do it. I'll never be able to show my face at court again."

Kel opened her mouth, and then closed it. While rape and sexual assault were woefully common problems for women, people rarely talked about the same thing happening to men. One of the things she was most proud of during her tenure at the castle was helping Lalasa evolve from a timid mouse to a robust young woman, which was done by empowering her enough against men. The courts of the Goddess were set up almost specifically for sexual crimes against women or girls, but nothing was ever said about men and boys. It simply didn't exist in society. Kel had never even thought about it before.

And she knew what Neal said was the truth. She didn't think so lowly of Duke Baird and Neal's mother that they would forsake their son over it, but general sentiment could be cruel. Kel knew this from personal experience. The stigma would be crushing, particularly for a family so well known as Neal's.

When Kel looked down again, her heart ached for her friend. "_I_ believe you," she said.

Neal's eyes closed, and he relaxed into her arms again. "I know. Just… don't tell. I've already spoken to Roald, Greler and Kellen – we're just going to say that the Scanrans were going to try and get us to serve them. None of us… want this to get out."

Kel considered. It was unlikely that the King was going to put them all under truth-spells. It was unlikely even that the Crown would ask specifically what happened to the mages, as there were plenty of reasons for Scanra to try and deplete the Crown of weapons. She sighed.

"What about the other two mages? Did they-"

"I don't know," Neal interrupted. "We didn't discuss it."

Kel paused, thinking. "All right. Not a word from me," she promised, reaching up to smooth back Neal's hair again. A part of her rebelled: this reminded her of Vinson and Lalasa, how she had kept her mouth shut and then Vinson had gone on to hurt so many other girls. But what else could she do? And Maggur certainly wasn't going to try this again, being as he was dead. She could feel Neal's pulse racing, but her fingers in his hair seemed to calm him down. They lay in silence for a while, the only movement between them Kel stroking Neal's hair, until Neal's breathing evened out again.

"It was the blonde woman," Neal said suddenly. It startled Kel: she had thought he had fallen asleep. "The one who… helped me save you. She's pregnant with… my child."

"I wonder why she did it. Helped you heal me, that is," Kel murmured, remembering the dark, twisting well. When the green and blue fire had changed to the multicolor blaze; that must have been when the woman had lent her power.

Neal shook his head against her shoulder. "I don't know. I wasn't able to ask, and nobody else thought to. Qasim said that after I had passed out, she just turned and walked away. Nobody stopped her, not after what they had seen her do."

Kel nodded, her fingers still absently moving through Neal's bangs. If she could find a way to tactfully mention it to Yuki she would – he seemed to like it. "She's definitely pregnant?"

"Yes," Neal replied, and Kel felt him close his eyes again. "When she was giving me the power for your healing… I could tell."

Kel sighed, and they lapsed into silence again. The boat rocked gently, and Kel closed her eyes.

"Hey, Kel?" Neal asked, when Kel had almost fallen asleep.

"Mm?" Kel wanted to know.

"Will you be my best man at my wedding?"

Kel snorted. "Sometimes it seems my entire life has been dedicated to gender-bending."

"You're evading the question. And I promise the wedding will be before you need to go off on another rescue mission; you seem to be on them quite frequently these days."

"Yes, of course I'll do it," Kel said, nudging him slightly, too lazy to cuff him properly. "Now either go to sleep or go away; I'm tired."

Neal hummed happily, before shifting next to her, pillowing his head against her chest. Kel resettled a little awkwardly, as she had never tried to sleep in such close quarters with another person.

"Kel?"

She sighed, almost having fallen asleep again. "Do you _ever_ shut up?"

"Thanks."

She didn't reply, only touched their foreheads together before drifting asleep.


	8. Epilogue

_Epilogue, eleven years later_.

Keladry of Mindelan trotted away from the practice courts, sweaty. Though she was incredibly busy these days, she still liked to find time to let the young knights try their skills against her. She sighed, tipping back her head to let the warm breeze push back her hair. Summer was dying, squires and returning pages were filtering back into the palace again, and the new pages were readying themselves to be presented to Padraig haMinch, still training master after a decade. It was a good time to be in Corus, in Kel's opinion. Her favorite.

A muscle twinged in her calf and she winced, slowing her gait to a walk and then pausing to stretch. Having hit the age of thirty, she wasn't quite as flexible as she used to be and had to be careful to keep limber. But she was still one of the top knights in swordplay and unparalleled with her glaive. The Crown had finally realized the value of _naginata_ training, and Roald and Shinkokami had invited some trainers from the Yamani islands to teach willing Tortallan nobles their skills, with Kel's help. It had become especially vogue with young girls, having grown up on tales of the Lady Knight's prowess on the weapon and being completely enamored with the graceful Yamani princess. King Jonathan and Queen Thayet still sat firmly on their thrones, and Kel enjoyed being a defender of that prosperity.

Bracing her hands against the side of the building, she bent her right knee to give her left calf a stretch. She was out and about more often than not these days, both on the occasional bandit-hunting errand and also to maintain her shelters.

When she had docked with the Kraken's Supper eleven years ago, Kel, as leader of the rescue mission had become an instant hero, credited almost single-handedly with the rescue's success in bringing the Crown Prince home. Kel had protested vehemently against the claim: after all, she had been stabbed in the back and half-dead for most of the final battle, but nobody seemed to want to listen. The bards' songs she heard composed in her honor made her shake her head ruefully: to listen to them, she was a twenty-foot-tall giant slaying Scanrans by the hundreds with one swipe of her mighty glaive.

_If that's all it takes to be a legend_, Kel thought, shaking her head and turning to switch to her second calf, _legends are made from baskets of lies._

But in reward for her bravery, she was richer than she had ever imagined being. More money than she had ever conceived of existing lay in her coffers, with several hundred thousand Crowns invested in gold and silver holdings throughout Tortall, which paid monthly dividends that were larger than Mindelan's original holdings had been worth when she was a page.

At a loss for what to do with so much wealth, she had turned her eye over the past decade to a greater good: throughout Tortall in many of the larger towns and cities she had used her skills gained by directing Haven and New Hope to set up shelters for abused women and girls. The temples of the Goddess latched onto the idea, and most temple precincts now had one, even ones that had been too impoverished to support them before. The temples that had already had shelters got renovations and improved supplies.

Of course, Kel was now able to pay staff to oversee the running of the shelters, so she wasn't as bogged down with the details as she had been when directing Haven. She was essentially the treasury and figurehead of the shelters, but Kel didn't mind.

Her quieter operation was a parallel center set up for men and boys. It was still a rather alien concept in most parts of Tortall that men could be abused, but the Mithran priests had been surprisingly eager at the opportunity when Kel presented it. It made her believe that males had gone to the sun god's temples asking for asylum before, but the Mithran circuit had been unprepared to provide.

She had never married. When people asked, she always smiled and said she was just too busy to settle down and raise a family, but the real reason was that the right person had never come to ask.

Or rather, the right person was unable to ask, as he had died over ten years ago.

Standing up again, Kel leaned backwards to stretch her spine. She was due to leave to Pearlmouth in about four days, to look at newly-erected shelters on both the grounds of the Goddess and Mithros. She needed to pack.

Jump turned around the corner, yipping and breaking her from her reverie. In old age not much had changed about the dog, except that he might have gotten uglier. "Hey, boy," Kel greeted him, opening her hands to show she didn't have any treats. "I just got finished- hey!"

Jump had latched onto her boot with his teeth and was tugging towards the temple gates. Moments later, sparrows – there were so many sparrows that knew Kel now it seemed she could go from city to city and encounter a friendly flock at each one – peeped in her ears and hopped on the ground in the same direction Jump was pointing.

The message was clear enough. "All right, all _right_," she told the animals, turning around to follow them back towards the castle gates. "But nobody else seems to be alarmed."

She trotted behind the menagerie, and, just as she expected, there was nothing of note going on. Soldiers patrolled on the ramparts as usual; castle flags cracked assertively in the calm breeze. "Jump, what in Mithros'-"

"Girl, you've got no business here," one of the guards was saying, obviously looking at something shorter than he was. "Run along."

"I want to be a _knight_," a sharp, girlish voice said mulishly. "It's my birthright, so get out of my way!"

The guard standing next to the first one sighed, and put his hand against his helmet like his head hurt. "You need to be a noble to become a knight," he said. "Go do something to get yourself ennobled, and _then_ we'll talk."

"I _am_ a noble!" the girl shrieked. Kel edged closer, intrigued.

"You're a noble, and yet you come with no escort and no herald and you're dressed like a street urchin," the first guard sighed. He prodded forward with the blunt edge of his spear. "Run along, miss, before we- _ow_!"

He hopped angrily on one foot – the girl must have done something to him. The second guard slid forward with a practiced move and there was the thick sound of wood hitting flesh and a child's yell, and then the air flared with green-and-gold, knocking both men back.

When the guards advanced again, Kel had stepped forward, with Jump growling at her heels and nearly a hundred sparrows whirling in the air. "Stand back," she ordered them.

The guards recognized her instantly, stepping back and looking worriedly up at the sparrow cloud. Everybody knew the damage the birds could do, particularly with so many. "But Lady, she just-" the one said, pointing to the second guard, who massaged his shin ruefully.

"She just kicked him in the shin, he'll live," Kel replied, looking down.

When she saw Neal's eyes glare up at her from a child's face, she thought her heart would stop. The girl lay on her back in the dusty street, blood running from her nose. Without taking her eyes off of Kel, the girl reached up to her nose and power, dark green edged with gold, flared from her hand, stopping the bleeding. Her long-sleeved tunic and breeches were homespun but of good quality.

But without question, it was a blonde, long-haired version of a young Neal lying in the street, still watching her warily. From the widow's peak to the sharp mouth to the long fingers, it was Neal. Kel took a shaky breath.

"What's your name?" she asked the female Neal.

The girl, sensing that the guards wouldn't cause her trouble with Kel around, stood up and brushed herself off haughtily. "Neala," she said, wincing as blood dribbled out of the side of her mouth. She wiped it away, and then reached for her mouth with a green-gold glowing hand again.

Kel's head swam. "Your name is _Neala_," she repeated.

Neala nodded, locking her hands behind her back. "My father was Nealan of Queenscove," she said flatly, her eyes boring into Kel's, as if daring her to disagree. "If he's still alive."

"Lady, you can't be listening to this," one of the guards protested. "Everyone knows Sir Nealan only has sons. And they're half Yamani. There isn't a Yaman bone in this one's body."

It was true. Neal and Yuki had gotten married less than a month after they had returned from Scanra, and in the past decade they had produced four boys, the oldest of which was going to the castle for knight training next year. And it was true that the girl in front of her was in no way from the Islands: her skin and hair were all northern Tortallan, pale as silver coins. The glaring green eyes were a piercing contrast.

Northern Tortallan… or Scanran. And that was what worried Kel.

Kel opened her mouth before a long-forgotten voice entered her mind – Irnai, who she hadn't seen since they had returned with her mother from Scanra. _If he's like this now_, she had told Kel when they were preparing to leave New Hope, more than ten years ago by this point, _what will he do when his daughter tries for her knighthood?_

"Goddess, Mithros," Kel said softly, staring down at Neala, who stared back just as stonily. Illegitimate, half-Scanran, conceived from an unwanted union – what was Neal going to do, indeed.

Neala stuck out her hand. "I'm Neala, formerly of Rathhausak and of Queenscove," she said. "I believe you have the advantage?"

Kel couldn't help but smile slightly – handshaking was a very Scanran greeting. She returned the favor. "I'm Keladry of Mindelan."

Neala's world-weary look dropped in an instant. "You're the Protector of the Small!" she cried, eyes shining with admiration and tightening her grip on Kel's hand, looking more like a proper eleven-year-old. "You rescued my father!"

Kel frowned, looking around at the guards, who had all stopped what they were doing to watch the exchange. If she wasn't careful, the gossip was going to spread like wildfire. "I'll be taking her in," she told them, quickly ushering Neala inside.

Neala smirked at the guards as Kel half-dragged her into the castle grounds. Kel lead her behind an outbuilding for some semblance of privacy: the sparrows flitted into sentry positions.

"Where's your mother?" Kel asked, hands on her hips.

Neala frowned, crossing her arms and turning up her small nose. The resemblance to Neal at his most defensive was eerie. "Does it matter?" she asked. "It's not through her that I have right to get my shield."

Kel sighed. "It might matter. Illegitimate children can try for their shield, but their fathers have to recognize them."

Neala stuck out her lower lip. "Mama always told me I was meant to be a weapon. I want to be one. There's nothing in Scanra for either Mama or me… and I have the power."

Kel crossed her arms, trying to figure out what to do. "What power?" she asked.

Neala rubbed her nose and held out her hand, which flared with strong Gift, green edged with gold. Kel took a breath. Most Gifts were only one color, because usually one parent either didn't possess the Gift or one parent's Gift was stronger than the other. If the Gift was dual-colored, it meant that the child's parents were an equal match with power. Kel knew that Neal had an unusually strong healer's Gift – if her mother had been as strong with power as Neal was, then the child would be a formidable sorcerer indeed.

"Why a knighthood?" Kel asked. "You've got the power to be a mage, and then it doesn't matter if you're noble or not."

Neala scuffed the ground with a well-worn boot, her long Scanran-blonde hair hanging down from her face. "My father was a knight," she said. "Mama always wanted me to be one, too."

Kel's head ached. Of course, there was no hard proof that this girl was who she said she was, but how else would she know so much about what hadn't been spoken about for over a decade? Everybody involved in the incident had been purposefully vague on the details. Kel didn't know how much the King and Queen knew about what had happened: it was possible that Roald had told his parents about what Maggur wanted, but if he had the throne had kept silent on the issue. Her age also matched up, and not to mention she was the spitting image of Neal.

While she was deciding, Neala had been sizing her up. "You can call me Neal," she offered. "My mama did."

Kel put a hand to her face and smiled. "Okay, Neal," she told the girl, "I can take you to the castle… we're going to have to do some… checks to make sure that your story works out. Not that I don't believe you-" Neala had opened her mouth to protest, "-but the court has to believe you, too. And I suppose you can meet your father. He's a healer here."

Neala cocked her head, a crease of worry drawing between her brows. Kel wanted to laugh. She was unintentionally so much like Neal it hurt. "Do you think he'll be angry?"

"Surprised, most likely," Kel replied dryly, remembering how Irnai had told her Neal didn't like surprises, but the road to his life was littered with them. "Come on."

Kel put a hand on the girl's back and they walked to the castle together.


End file.
